Burn Limits
by Taivasalla
Summary: Sakura grows up in a shinobi household. Haunted by a broken father, she ends up on Team 7 a different person.
1. Chapter 1

_Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, nor any associated ideas or characters._

_Life is very busy. I am trying to write more often, but it has to take second place to other things. Nevertheless, I thought I would share this story, and slowly it will progress towards an end. _

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><p><em>This story diverges from canon. I was interested in writing a different interpretation of Sakura. Point of change:<em>

_"My mother died when I was four. To say my father took it hard is like saying the Kyuubi put a hitch in Yondaime's plans. I went to stay with my aunt and uncle, and perhaps that was the turning point in my life." -Haruno Sakura  
><em>

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><p>"Sakura!"<p>

The girl turned, and her face brightened. "Ino."

The blond girl looped her arms around her friend's shoulders and twirled around. "You didn't show up last night."

Sakura hunched her shoulders apologetically and gently removed Ino's arms from around her. "Sorry. Aunt came home, and we were kind of busy."

"Is she okay?" Ino asked, concerned, but at Sakura's nod she skipped backwards a few steps, heading down the street. "Now come on, you don't want to be late for the test!"

Sakura grinned, and followed her dancing purple friend. "You better pass, Ino, 'cause I don't want to have to give you remedial lessons!"

Ino swirled around and stuck out her tongue. "Me? Fail? Hah, Billboard Brow, you better watch it or I'll blow you right out of the water."

Sakura's answer was two senbon whistling past Ino's ear. The other girl laughed and dodged, letting the needles clatter harmlessly onto the ground. Sakura strode past her and picked them up, tucking them carefully into the case strapped to her thigh. "Close call, Pig. I don't think I have to worry."

The classroom was almost full when they arrived, stepping together through the door. "Hey, Sakura," Ino whispered. "Sasuke's here."

She nodded distractedly, eyes searching the room. Ino disappeared from her side, to try and get the seat next to the class prodigy. There, in back, like always, was Shikamaru's spiky ponytail. Sakura dropped into the chair beside him, and poked him. "You owe me six packs of explosive tags," she hissed.

He lifted his head from the desk and blinked. "Wha'?"

"I said the price was six packs. So where are they?"

His eyes shifted guiltily. "Uh. I'll have them tomorrow?"

Sakura's hand closed on his forearm. "Shikamaru," she crooned. "Shikamaru. I get you into the tournament, and you don't have my explosive tags? Do you know how long it took to get the papers?"

Shikamaru tried to pry her fingers off. "Uh, Sakura, you're hurting my arm."

She glanced down, as if surprised, and let go. "Tomorrow."

"Yeah." He sighed in relief as she stood up and bounced off to another empty seat. His father would never have let him participate in an event where shogi shared space with poker and fistfights and everything was open to betting, so he really was indebted to Sakura. But six packs of explosive tags were more than he could easily get his hands on. Though that was certainly why Sakura had asked for them in return. It was illegal for stores to sell them to anyone but a ninja with valid ID, and Sakura couldn't afford to get caught faking again.

Though that wouldn't be a problem after today. Shikamaru was sure Sakura was going to pass, and he was pretty sure he would too. Sakura might not be a genius, or a prodigy, but she'd been training harder than anyone. She also had a violent streak that gave her just that little edge.

His thoughts turned again to the tournament. A lot of money had changed hands during the course of that night, a lot of alcohol as well. He hadn't touched the latter, but he'd left with a lot more of the former than he'd entered with.

He yawned. He'd talk with Narita-san this afternoon. If he passed the exam, he could just purchase the notes. If not, he'd figure something out. He was good at that.

He left his eyes slit open long enough to determine that though the empty seat Sakura had chosen was next to Chouji; she had no further interest in him today. Then he resumed his nap.

Sakura waved hello to the Akimichi as she slipped into the seat beside him. He mumbled a greeting back. Sakura smiled at him, then leaned back in her seat. Now that she had dealt with Shikamaru—and he had better have the payment by tomorrow—she was free to worry about the exam.

She'd studied hard through all of Academy. Top of her class in scholastic grades, even above Uchiha Sasuke, but it was ninjutsu and taijutsu where she faltered. Despite intensive coaching whenever her aunt was around, and occasionally by her aunt's friends, she was still one of the weakest members of the class. Chouji could pin her with one hand in weaponless combat. Sasuke destroyed her in every ninjutsu spar. Shikamaru could outthink her at every turn. Even Ino, though Sakura would never admit this out loud, was in many ways her superior.

Ino was beautiful. Ino was popular. Ino was graceful. Ino was perfect. And she, Sakura, was Billboard Brow. She had split nails, scarred palms, and dirt behind her ears because her aunt had pinned her in the mud this morning while they sparred. She was Haruno Sakura, that girl who knew how to get you into adult gambling tournaments with no questions asked, that girl who knew every bartender in the village, that girl who would stick a senbon in your arm if you pissed her off.

Ino could charm herself into anyone's good graces. Ino could wrap boys around her finger, make them all think they loved her. Sakura told herself she didn't want love. Sure, Sasuke was handsome, Sasuke was dreamy, Sasuke was the best ninja this school had to offer, but Sasuke would never look at her in _that_ way, no matter how long her petal-hued hair grew.

And she didn't want him to. She didn't want to end up like her father, hunched over a grimy bar in the mid-afternoon, telling the same stories, over and over, to anyone who came within his bleary sight. She didn't want _her_ child paying her tabs in shady dives across the village, didn't want _her _child opening the door to the village police holding her by the scruff of her neck because she thought she'd seen someone across the street and assaulted a stranger.

And she was getting distracted from the test again. She shifted nervously, and yanked her eyes away from Sasuke's shiny black hair. Actually—and her eyes snapped back—something was going on around him. Not uncommon, but still...

The gaggle of girls at the side of Sasuke's desk had been pushing and shoving as usual, but now they were suddenly still. Naruto, that class clown, had climbed on the desk in front of Sasuke, and as Sakura watched in horrified amusement, was bumped from behind.

She wished she could see Ino's face as the boys' smashed together. She laughed under her breath, the test wiped completely from her mind. Sasuke and Naruto were kissing.

Sasuke and Naruto were the two people in the class she'd had absolutely no success in manipulating in all their years together. Sasuke, because he didn't take her seriously or even notice her, unless he was crushing her in a spar, and Naruto, because he was so infatuated with her that manipulating him was unnecessary, and felt somehow wrong.

Iruka arrived before the girls could bruise much more than Naruto's pride. Sakura knew that Naruto, if he had felt endangered, could have easily run away from them or fended them off—most of the girls were going to fail the upcoming exam, Sakura predicted—but Naruto's strange code of honor seemed to prevent him from hitting girls. Sakura dearly hoped that whenever the klutz graduated, he'd get over his naiveté.

The class settled down quickly, the exam a damper on even the most carefree of spirits. It would take all of the day: first the taijutsu, then the written, then the ninjutsu. A teacher would spar with each student; starting slow, they would go over every basic move, increasing the pace as proficiency was demonstrated, until each and every student was beaten. For some, it only took two minutes—the basic moves at slow speeds were all they could handle. For Sasuke and Kiba, it took six minutes to take them down. Many of the girls jeered that Kiba lasted that long because he had Mizuki-sensei, the more lenient of the two teachers, as his examiner. But Sakura had seen the tightening of Mizuki's expression, as he tried to react with ever increasing but still gradual effectiveness, and she had seen his occasional slips and how Kiba's lips pulled off his teeth as he absorbed the blows or rolled with the takedowns.

Sakura lasted four and a half minutes against Iruka-sensei. It threw her off-balance, how after every successful sequence he smiled encouragement, and after every hit she failed to block or avoid he grimaced in apology. When he knocked her to the dirt the last time, her arm twisted up behind her back, he helped her to her feet and praised her efforts. "Good job, Sakura-chan! That was excellent!" She bowed and smiled back politely, but she felt uncertain about her performance. Aunt knocked her down and shouted at her to pick herself back up; Aunt broke through her defense and snarled to watch her guard. So when Aunt sniffed and said "good," she meant it. Iruka-sensei praised everything, so how was she to tell if she had scored high enough to pass?

She resolved to ace the written portion, in case the taijutsu came back low.

And she actually had a shot at that. The written portion was math, history, rules. Lots of rules. Proper mission report form, levels of command, as well as basic shinobi conduct. Loyalty to village is paramount. The good of the many always surpasses the good of the self. Emotion does not benefit a shinobi. She finished early, and rechecked her answers.

Mizuki-sensei nodded to her as she handed her papers in, and gestured her out of the classroom, so as not to disturb the remaining test takers. She spent the break outside, under the trees. When the time came for the final test, the most important test, she took a deep breath, stilled her anxious fidgeting, and went back inside.

Her classmates, all reconvened in the classroom, were itching with nerves. They giggled and ran around, making the most of the present since their futures were in limbo. Iruka and Mizuki-sensei showed up a minute later. "Sit down," Mizuki yelled, his silky voice projecting command. They sat. "We have finished calibrating the first two tests. It is time for the final section. This will be the last chance to pass, or fail, the exam. To graduate, or not."

"We'll call one name at a time," Iruka announced. "The ninjutsu test will be held next door. The jutsu is bunshin."

"If we have to come back in here," Mizuki added, "Because any of you are being too rowdy, those students will fail immediately." He smiled at them, and called the first name. "Inuzuka Kiba."

Sakura flicked through the seals under her desk as she waited. Two ways of making the bunshin, her aunt had taught her. Every jutsu has multiple ways. Seal forms are just props to mold chakra; if you can get the same result with one seal as with two, use one. If you can do it without any, that's even better. She did the full form, the half form, the quarter form, molding and absorbing the chakra without ever releasing it into reality.

Some of the students were creating clones, inspecting them for flaws, popping them away into clouds of smoke. A few wailed about lame limbs or fuzzy borders. Sasuke sat immobile at his desk, glowering at a wall. Shikamaru napped. Ino chatted with, or at, Hinata, who mostly blushed and stared at her desk. Naruto sweated. Sakura kept seeing him, over next to Sasuke, wringing his hands and worrying.

She had just about decided to go over and tell him to stop muttering to himself when Iruka appeared in the doorway. "Haruno Sakura."

She chose the one-seal form, and molded her chakra with precision. Two perfect clones snapped into existence beside her. Mizuki clapped once. "Congratulations Sakura-chan." He lifted a neatly folded, shiny new headband from the table and held it out. "You graduated!"

She told herself she had expected it, that it was only a headband, but she couldn't stop the thrill of excitement down her spine as she took the symbol of her village from her teacher. She was a genin now. A true ninja. She beamed.

They all gathered outside in the sun once the test was over. Parents had begun to arrive, sweeping their children up in congratulatory hugs, or consoling ones. Ino's father was whirling her around through the air, their blond ponytails swinging.

Sakura walked through the crowd, searching for her aunt or uncle. "Sakura!" She turned, and there he was, salt-and-pepper hair moving at shoulder-height through the people towards her.

"Uncle!"

He hugged her and kissed her nose. "Congratulations." They pushed back, and he flicked the metal plate tied cross her forehead. "You did it!"

The smiling was going to split her face apart. She pulled him into a hug again. "I'm so happy!"

"You should be," he told her. "This is a huge accomplishment."

"Where's Aunt?" she asked, glancing behind him to scan his line of approach.

His expression grew serious. "Uncle Shoji is in the hospital." Sakua paled. Sato Shoji was one of her aunt's friends, not a blood relative, but family nevertheless. "He'll be okay," her uncle assured her, "but he's in a bad place right now."

"And Inoue-san is on a mission," Sakura realized. With his girlfriend out of the village, her aunt was the closest person Shoji had. "Can I visit him?"

Her uncle shook his head sadly. "Probably not the best idea, sweetheart. But I'm sure he'll drop by once he's discharged."

Sakura understood. But if that were so, "Will Aunt be home for dinner?" she asked plaintively.

Her uncle smiled at her. "Yes, sweetie. And what a dinner it will be!" She tried to twist the details out of him, but he just laughed at her. "You'll see. You'll see!"

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><p>She was subdued the next day. The evening had been perfect: her favorite foods, all the family that mattered gathered around her in celebration. But in the morning, Aunt had disappeared sometime before she woke, and her uncle said Shoji had crashed during the early hours of the morning. Shoji would pull through, he assured her, but she still felt sick as she entered the classroom. Ino caught her eye, and asked what was wrong. Sakura shrugged the concern off, and took a seat.<p>

She was surprised to see that Naruto had graduated. He ended up sitting next to her, but he seemed distracted and left her mostly alone, for which she was grateful. Iruka began reading off the teams. Mizuki-sensei was surprisingly absent. As names were called and more and more of her classmates grouped off, the rising tension drove other thoughts out of her mind. "Team four...Team Six...Team Seven. Haruno Sakura," she jerked up straight in her chair, eyes glued to Iruka's face, trying to read his lips before he spoke. "Uzumaki Naruto. Uchiha Sasuke."

She slumped back, astonished. This was terrible. She had the only two people who neither respected her nor listened to her. The only two people she couldn't work easily with. And, by the glares from the other females in the room, one of her teammates was going to gain her enemies. She glanced back to find Ino, who looked as stunned as she felt. _You?_ Ino mouthed. But then, a devious expression grew on her face. Sakura wilted even further. Ino was going to turn this to her advantage after all, and Sakura was going to be caught up once again in the Battle for Sasuke.

She listened to the rest of the assignments despondently, wishing she could have Ino's team instead. _But I don't have the skills for that team, _she realized sadly.

She tried to rebuff Naruto's suggestion to eat lunch together politely, but he still looked hurt. It couldn't be helped, though, she thought as she slipped out of the school's gates. Uncle had said that if Shoji was awake, she might be able to visit today.

Shoji was awake. He talked with Sakura, ruffled her hair and congratulated her on graduation. If he kept his right arm under the sheet the whole time, if he couldn't sit up without help, at least he was smiling.

She was late getting back to class. Most of the new genin had cleared out of the room already, but Sasuke and Naruto were still there, backs to each other and glowering. Iruka-sensei was just leaving. "Sakura-chan! I'm so glad you made it! Your jounin-sensei will be here soon. Good luck!"

She took a seat between the two boys, hoping to lighten the atmosphere a little. But as their sensei failed to appear, even Sakura began to glower. She had been worried about being late, but now... When Naruto hid an eraser in the door, she protested only half-heartedly.

When he slid open the door, and the eraser dropped onto his head in a puff of dust, Naruto broke out laughing. Sakura swallowed a grin, opening her mouth to chastise Naruto for his inappropriate behavior.

But something about the jounin stopped her. About the way he stood in the door, his hands carefully away from his sides. Something inside her twisted. _He's got blood on his hands._ But half-gloves covered his palms and his fingers were scrubbed clean. Perfectly clean.

She shivered, and shifted back in her seat. Through the settling chalk haze, his single, low-lidded eye raked across the three of them. "My first impression? I hate you."

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><p>The evening was strained. Shoji had had a seizure; her aunt had cashed in a week of vacation and was back at the hospital with him.<p>

Her uncle was paying the bills. He held the pen like a poisoned needle in his thick fingers, scratching in numbers and dates with his lips pursed up under his nose.

Sakura threw senbon at the target pinned to their kitchen wall. _Thunk. _"He thinks we're all useless." _Thunk._ "I think he _wants _to fail us tomorrow." A third hit the target, and she stalked across the length of the room to pull them out of the padded board. Senbon bristling from between her fingers, she turned to her uncle. "What if he fails me?"

He grunted. "If you do your best, it'll be fine."

"No," she snapped, spinning around to face the target again. Six senbon disappeared up to their midpoints in the target. She didn't know how to say it, but it was eating her away inside. His hands had been bloody. She knew it.

"You know," her uncle said, "You still haven't told me who 'he' is. I might know him," he added with a touch of humor.

"Hatake Kakashi."

The incessant drag of pen on paper ended abruptly. "Ah."

She looked at him. "What?"

"Kakashi. Good man." He met her eyes, a slight grin on his lips. "He used to run with Shoji."

Sakura's mouth dropped open. "_Him?_ Uncle Shoji was friends with a guy like _him?_"

"Your aunt, too," he added, obviously enjoying her astonishment. "Many years ago. Though friends might be a strong word. Comrades, more like."

"But he—" but the words caught again, in uncertainty and confusion. "What's he like?"

Her uncle shrugged. "Powerful ninja. He'll be able to teach you a lot, I think." He leaned back, tilting his head a little as he watched her. "Kinder than he likes to act."

She snorted. "He told us not to eat breakfast, or his test would make us vomit."

He arched one eyebrow, and Sakura frowned at him. She'd been practicing that move for months, and still couldn't manage it. "Don't let him scare you, Sakura. Fear is a powerful weapon, and it's something you want to ration carefully."

She gave him a twisted smile. "Yes, Uncle."

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><p>She woke up two hours before dawn, and warmed up in the strip of yard behind their house. The trunks of their two trees were scarred and battered from years of abuse, and they took the new blows as stolidly as they had for decades. The sweat was cooling on her skin when she showed up at the communal training field Hatake had designated for their exam this morning.<p>

The other two genin showed up soon after, Naruto yawning widely. They waited as the sun peeked up, and waited as it rose high into the sky.

When Hatake finally arrived, Naruto was asleep on his backpack. Sasuke was still standing, not even having put his bag down. Sakura was throwing kunai at a tree, snapping them back before impact with reels of wire. "Yo."

Naruto made a fuss, and all three suffered through the jounin's long-winded excuses before he finally explained the test. Sakura felt the moment the three of them realized just what the test meant as a blow to the gut. Her muscles clenched. "One of us won't graduate."

And he smiled at them. That insidious whisper that had haunted her since yesterday curled up again in the back of her head. _But Uncle said he wasn't that bad,_ she reminded herself, squashing it down. Whatever happened, even with the rules he had set out, they would all be okay. So one of them would have to repeat the last year of Academy. It would be bad, but any one of them would make it through.

She grit her teeth. Well, it wasn't going to be her.

They split into the trees when he set the timer, and Sakura hid herself quickly. She needed a plan. Despite what the jounin had said, it was obvious she wouldn't win by force. Or by outwitting him, she mused. She'd have to play on something he either wouldn't realize or couldn't ignore. Something he wouldn't have experience with.

Ideas surfaced and drowned as she watched the jounin casually taunt the third genin. She'd almost come up with something, when he disappeared. She frowned. Now what?

Abandoned after their scuffle, Naruto was wandering the field, shaking his fist at the trees. Then, his eye fastened on something. She realized what it was just as he began to reach. _Idiot,_ she sighed in her head as he shot into the air, to dangle two meters above the ground.

She waited, wondering if Kakashi would show up. When he didn't, she slipped out of cover and ran low across the field. Glancing up at the tree, she hefted her kunai. Naruto, craning his head, suddenly realized what she was likely planning. "What! No! Sakura-chan!" he screeched.

"Sak-ur-a-chan," came a sing-song voice from behind her shoulder. She jumped, and let the kunai fly. Naruto tumbled down in a heap of flailing limbs just as Kakashi tapped her on the shoulder. And then a swarm of shuriken came curving out of the bushes.

She was facing them, and saw them before the jounin reacted. Half a step sideways and turn, and it was too late for Kakashi to do anything. She lurched forward, the pain surprising, as it always was. She saw, without really noticing, the widening of the jounin's single eye. He caught her as she fell, holding her against his chest as she sank to the ground.

She pressed a hand to her shoulder, looked blankly at the redness slipping down her fingers. Sasuke had thrown well; the wounds were deep. "Sakura." She let her hands drop down between them and didn't answer. Kakashi lowered her carefully to the ground, reaching around behind her with one gloved hand to the embedded weapons.

The other hand closed firmly around her fingers. "Not quite, Sakura-chan," he drawled.

"Damn." She made one last attempt towards the bells, but pushing against his grip was like fighting a concrete pillar. She had been _touching_ them. She had been _that_ close. The bells were smeared with blood, now, as she gazed sadly over at the lost chance.

Kakashi stood up and looked down at her. She tried to figure out what the look meant, but even without the mask, she doubted she'd have been able to. Then he disappeared.

"Damn," she said again. Naruto, hanging again in shocked silence from the tree branch, began thrashing.

"I thought I got you down," she muttered, slipping another kunai from her pouch and sitting up painfully.

He yelped as he fell, but Kakashi seemed to have only trapped it twice, and Naruto remained on the ground this time. "Are you okay?" he squealed, rushing over and hovering uselessly above her. "Who threw the kunai? Sasuke? Sasuke! You idiot!" he yelled. "You hurt Sakura-chan!"

"Naruto," she tried to interrupt. When he just continued railing, she shouted. "Naruto!" The breath jostled her back and she bent over, swallowing down a whimper.

He shut up. "Sakura-chan?"

"I stepped in the way, Naruto. It's not Sasuke's fault." He gaped. She sighed, and reached around to her back. Her fingers brushed against metal, but there was no way she was going to be able to put enough pressure on the holes from this angle. "Come be helpful, okay?"

"What do I do?" he asked nervously.

She braced her hands on the ground. "Pull the shuriken out and put pressure on the wounds. There're bandages in my hip pouch; we can tie them up once the bleeding stops."

He walked around to her back and hesitated. "I've only got two hands, and you've got six shuriken in your back."

She swore. "Goddamn it." Everything hurt back there; she'd had no idea that many had hit. Maybe stepping directly into the swarm hadn't been such a good idea.

"Wait," Naruto crowed loudly. Sakura flinched. He stepped away from her, and put his hands together. "Kage bunshin!"

And then there were hands all over her back, and the sudden jump in pain as the shuriken were pulled from her flesh and pressure applied. Naruto's voice came uncertainly from behind her. "Sakura-chan? Didn't that medic who came to class say we were supposed to leave things in?"

"Bit late for that," she said, a smile fighting its way onto her pained face for a brief second. "But I can't fight with shuriken in me, and we still have to get those bells."

"Shouldn't you go to the hospital?" he asked.

"No." It came out hard, and her teeth ground against each other. "I'm not giving up."

There was a rustle in the bushes. Sakura's head snapped around. "What?" Naruto asked from behind her. She raised a hand, trying to hush him.

Sasuke appeared out of the leaves, glancing warily around. "Go to the hospital," he said abruptly.

Her head had begun to hurt. "Why?" she bit out. Then she had to put her head between her knees, hoping the world would stop spinning.

Sasuke picked up one of the shuriken Naruto had pulled from her back. "Because these are poisoned." Sakura groaned. "You're going to pass out in three or four minutes."

Black was already edging her vision. He must have dosed it for an adult Kakashi's size, she guessed. She might end up worse than unconscious if that were true. Kami be damned, she needed to think through her plans better. "Give me the antidote," she demanded.

He frowned. "Why?"

"Because I know you have it, because if I leave I'll never pass, and if I leave, there's no way you can either." He snorted. She lifted her head long enough to glare at him. "He's a jounin. You can't fight him, and he'll be on guard after I nearly got the bells."

The look on Sasuke's face was almost worth the pain. "You what?"

"I had my hand on them," she said bitterly. "Did you really think I got hit by accident?" Then she realized he had, and felt even angrier. "Anyway, the medicine'll take time to kick in, and you can go see if you can fight him for it. If you fail, get back here and the three of us can come up with something that might actually work." She was breathing heavily by the end of that speech, her words beginning to slur together. "But give me the damn antidote."

It tasted terrible, and did nothing for her pounding head. But she let Sasuke leave to go in search of the jounin, and waited for it to do its work.

After ten minutes, the spinning had stopped. She asked Naruto if the bleeding had stopped too, and told him to bandage up the wounds. He dismissed his bloody-handed clones as soon as she was taken care of.

"Where's Sasuke?"

Naruto, still angry after all the time elapsed, glowered. "Dunno. Off fighting that stupid teacher, I guess."

Sakura braced her hands on the ground and shoved herself to her feet. When she swayed, Naruto caught her arm. Then he promptly dropped it, a horrified look on his face. She raised an eyebrow. "What?"

"I didn't mean to touch you, I mean, I'm sorry that I—"

She grabbed for him as her knees shivered again. "Shut up." He shut up. They started walking, heading out in search for the third genin.

They found him, buried neck-deep in rocky dirt. Sakura, still leaning on Naruto's shoulder, snorted a laugh. "Need some help?"

Sasuke glared, but didn't protest when she drew a kunai and started digging him out. Naruto crossed his arms and scowled, but chivalry won out, and he bent to help Sakura dig.

"So?" Sakura asked as they worked. "What happened?"

"He's strong," Sasuke said, sneezing as dust rose around his face. "And on his guard."

"So we need a plan," Sakura reiterated.

Sasuke could move his shoulders, and he began twisting around, trying to free himself. "One of us has to fail." He got his arms free. Sakura grabbed a wrist, and Naruto, after a moment's hesitation, followed suit. They pulled him out of the dirt, and overbalanced. The three lay for a moment on the ground, breathing hard.

"Fail trying, or give up now," Sakura said philosophically. "I, for one, want to punch him in his stupid masked face."

"Yeah," Naruto growled.

Finally, Sasuke nodded. "Yes."

"Well." All three of them jumped, and scrambled to their feet. Hatake Kakashi was leaning against a tree at the edge of the clearing. A strange expression floated around his visible eye. "Hm."

Sakura drew a kunai; Naruto made to lunge forwards. Sasuke grabbed his collar and yanked him back. "Wait," he hissed.

A strange, harsh laugh dripped from the jounin's lips. "Test is over, kiddies." They all gasped. Sasuke dropped Naruto's jacket like it was acid-coated.

"The bell hasn't rung yet," Sakura said, knuckles white on her knife hilt.

There was a long, long pause, as Kakashi seemed to search for what to say to them. "I feel like going home." He smiled. Sakura choked. "Anyway," Kakashi continued, before Naruto's howl had quite left his throat. "You all passed. I'll see you tomorrow."


	2. Chapter 2

_Disclaimer: I do not own _Naruto_, nor make any profits off of the use of it. Characters you don't recognize are probably mine. _

_Thank you all for the reviews! They warm the cockles of my heart.  
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><p>Conversation at dinner that night was nothing but the exam. Shizuka and Iwao wanted to know every detail. When she got to the part about the shuriken, Shizuka's eyes narrowed. She made Sakura take off her shirt, running calloused hands gently over the freshly healed gashes. "They should fade," she said. "But you're going to have scars."<p>

Sakura shrugged. "No one's going to see them."

Shizuka slapped her on the shoulder. "Clever girl." Sakura winced, and pulled her shirt back over tender skin. The shirt was black and soft, and way too large. It was one of Iwao's, appropriated until Sakura mended the half dozen holes in her red tunic.

They were dissecting Sasuke's one-on-one fight when the doorbell rang. "I can get it." Sakura pushed back her chair and headed around the corner to the door.

He was leaning against the wall, where she couldn't see him from the windows. Sakura thought it was probably more that he couldn't stand up alone than any plan to be sneaky. Especially since Shizuka had that blind spot trapped with a vertical inch of flash-bangs. "Sakura, baby. I missed you. Why didn' you visit?"

Sakura folded her arms tight across her chest. This was the last thing she wanted to deal with tonight. Her back ached, her head still felt fuzzy from Sasuke's thrice-damned poison, and all she'd hoped for was a quiet dinner with her family. When he swayed forward, casting his arms open, she stepped back. "What do you want, Dad?"

He looked confused. "A hug from my daughter?" He came closer; Sakura started breathing through her mouth. He smelled of stale alcohol and cigarette smoke. It made her sick, and ashamed. She didn't want his smell on her, didn't want to meet her team in the morning knowing the scent of back alleys where garbage rotted next to puddles of urine still clung to her hair.

"I told you not to come around when you're drunk."

"You didn' visit yesserday," he continued, ignoring her words. "And you didn' today. I jus' wan'ed to see you."

"I didn't want to see you," she snapped. "I graduated from Academy, Dad." She tapped the headband she wore slung around her neck while she was at home. "Did you even know it was this year? I'm a genin now. A shinobi." She was shivering, she noticed, and her voice was rising. Shizuka and Iwao had to have heard by now. But she didn't want them to see him either, so she reined in her tone.

He blinked muzzily at her. "But you're too little."

"I'm twelve. That's plenty old enough to be working. You just never noticed! You think you can just barge into my life whenever you want, and forget about everything that matters to me!"

His face went hard. "Like you forgot about your mom?" His hand shot out and grabbed her wrist. She let him, stunned. She had forgotten. Completely and totally forgotten in studying for the exams, in the worry over Shoji, the excitement of graduation and the final test of their skills. She hadn't brought flowers to the grave this week, the anniversary. She hadn't gone to see if her father had managed to drink himself to death.

He pulled her in, breathing down on her face. "Sakura. Turn your back on me, but on _her? _ You ungrateful bitch."

Her wrist was bruising, but she didn't move. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

Suddenly her face was squished into the stains of a rumpled shirt. "I forgive you. I forgive you. I love you, Sakura. Remember that, yeah?" Tears dripped into her hair as Sakura shivered in his embrace. "Next year, yeah? You and me, together. We'll do it right, next year."

"Next year," she whispered.

* * *

><p>Sakura skirted the puddle without really noticing. Naruto was babbling loudly to the client, though Tazuna seemed less than interested in what he had to say. Sasuke was walking just in front of Kakashi, the both of them as silent as she was. Naruto scuffed his feet and threw a glance over his shoulder at Sakura, but she ignored him and he didn't break his flow of words.<p>

She was trying not to be angry. She was trying even harder not to be scared. Shizuka was off on a mission again. Sakura had never been away from the village while her aunt was gone before. Iwao had said it would be all right, and Sakura knew her feelings were irrational. Sakura being home wouldn't keep Shizuka safe. But Sakura couldn't help but blame Naruto for his impatient outburst at the mission office that would keep her away from news.

She kicked the ground viciously. How was she supposed to be a ninja if she was too damned scared to leave home? Iwao did it all the time, running courier missions to villages weeks away when for all he knew his wife would be deployed to a border hotspot by the time he got back. She supposed he got used to it, but she'd never thought to ask.

She wondered if her uncle ever had nightmares about it, the kind she'd had after the first time she'd seen her aunt come back injured. The kind where Shizuka stood at the foot of Sakura's bed, cupping her knobby hands as blood spilled onto Sakura's covers, asking Sakura over and over to please fix the leak, while Sakura lay frozen. The memory of the dream changed to an image of Shizuka cold and pale in hospital sheeting, and Sakura blinked back sudden tears, furious with herself.

The faintest clink was all the warning she had. She spun on one heel, in time to see the chains that wrapped around Kakashi in an instant. His eye went very wide. As the three genin stared in paralyzed shock, the two attackers pulled. It was done in less than seconds, a spray of blood.

They ran in a flanking maneuver, circling around the tiny group and coming up behind Naruto and Tazuna. A puff of dust was settling where Kakashi had gone down, as Sakura and Sasuke drew weapons. "Naruto!" Sakura shouted, as their teammate failed to move at all. Sasuke lunged forwards, shuriken and kunai already in the air.

Sakura reached the bridge builder and slapped his chest to make him focus. "Get back!" she snarled. He stumbled away, Sakura keeping her body between him and the strange ninja as they freed themselves from Sasuke's trapping blades.

She saw Sasuke move out of the corner of her eye, saw the left most of the attackers angle away just enough that to block the one would leave the second open to slaughter Tazuna. Freezing, muscle-locking panic started to rise up. Then Sasuke was in front of her, his arms spread as he faced the first enemy, and she lunged left and forward. She kept low, knees bent, and the second man had no chance to react to the unexpected attack. She was under his guard in a sliver of a second, her blade angled up and held tight. It slid into his abdomen like it did with the training dummies.

Her shoulder caught his solar plexus the instant after, stopping his forward motion. She twisted the blade and ripped it out, her other palm driving his chin backwards, sending him with a scream to the ground. She rode him down, her fingers in his eyes and her knees on his chest. There wasn't time for thought; her blade was already moving. His throat opened to the spine.

Where was the second one? She wrenched around, pivoting around the hand on his face. Something crunched under her palm as she pulled the kunai back to guard. Sasuke was still standing in front of the client, arms spread protectively. The second attacker was—

The second attacker was trapped in a headlock. Kakashi stood there, cool as stone, his forearm choking the air out of the prisoner. "Kakashi-sensei," she gasped.

He looked at her, crouched over the body. They were all looking at her, Sasuke, Tazuna, even Naruto, picking himself up from the dirt a few paces away, had his wide blue eyes glued to her face. "Oh shit," she whispered, and felt the hot blood dripping down her hand and forearm. She turned her head, and looked at the body beneath her. "Oh gods," she said, and tried to scramble off the corpse. His nose ground under her palm again. She was shaking when she found her feet.

"Naruto," Kakashi was saying. "Sorry I didn't help you right away. I got you hurt. I didn't think you wouldn't be able to move in time."

He walked towards Sasuke and Sakura, dragging the unconscious ninja with him. "Good work, Sasuke," he said. Then he met Sakura's eyes. "Status report, shinobi."

She'd never heard the phrasing before, but she latched onto his commanding tone and the formula like a rope. "Threat neutralized, sir." The honorific just came out at the end of the words without her entirely intending it. But there was hot gore all over her hands and she had to keep Kakashi on her side right now. Gods, they were all _looking_ at her.

"Well done. Clean your blade."

She nodded jerkily, and fumbled for a cloth. Kakashi dropped his unconscious prisoner to the ground and gestured to Sasuke. "Watch him."

As Sasuke drew another kunai, Kakashi knelt to exam her victim. It took only a brief moment before he turned to Naruto. "Naruto. These guys have poison on their claws."

"What?" Naruto stammered. Sakura looked up from her task. Naruto's usually ruddy face was very pale.

"The wound'll need to be opened, and the poisoned blood drained," Kakashi explained. "Don't move too much. It'll spread."

Sasuke tied the living ninja to a tree while Kakashi dragged the body into the nearby bushes. Naruto held his hand low in the air and sweated. Once her blade was clean, Sakura tried to wipe off her hands, but the cloth was soaked through. She scrubbed them against the dirt instead, and then linked them behind her back so she wouldn't have to see the mess.

She barely listened as Kakashi began interrogating Tazuna. Her heart was pounding so loud. When he suggested returning to the village however, the flash of a kunai caught her eye. "The hell, Naruto!" she shrieked, as blood spattered everywhere. He quivered, eyes narrow and hard as he stared at the four of them. She started forward, thinking to stop the bleeding, when she saw her hands again and realized she couldn't touch him without contaminating the wound.

Naruto sought out her gaze, his face tight with pain, his own blade buried deep in his hand. "In our test, you didn't hesitate to spill your blood instead of giving up, Sakura-chan," he said to her. "I'm not going to be a burden." His stare was fierce.

"Naruto," Kakashi drawled, apparently unconcerned by the sudden outburst from either of them. "That's all well and good, but any more than that and you're going to bleed to death."

Naruto squealed and began to dance in a terrified circle. Surprised, Sakura felt a grin growing on her face.

* * *

><p>They camped that night in the forest. Sakura glared all four males down for first crack at the stream, and scrubbed hard in the cold water for long minutes. She stripped bare and washed her clothes against a handful of pebbles. The stains weren't coming out entirely, but they also weren't quite so dark against the already red fabric anymore.<p>

Maybe she should start wearing black, she mused. It would hide the color better even than her red tunic. Then she realized what that meant about her future, and stuck her whole head in the water again to calm the nausea.

Kakashi had forbidden a fire, since it was not impossible that another set of enemies was out there. She sat shivering by her bedroll as the night fell, until Kakashi came around behind her and put his hands on her shoulders. Her clothes started to steam. "It's not a good idea to go washing things if you can't get them dry," he murmured. "As much as you may want to be clean."

"Sorry, sensei," she whispered. Naruto and Sasuke squabbled on the other side of the circled bedrolls. Tazuna snored softly.

He let go when the cloth was dry. "Yo, guys. Naruto! Sasuke!" They turned, and Kakashi gave all three of them a smile with his single eye. "Time to divvy up watches."

He took first watch for himself, and left the genin to argue the rest out amongst themselves while he ensconced himself in a tree. Soon, the boys were asleep and the forest settled down to the nighttime drone of insects and occasional call of a hunting owl. Sakura lay in her bedroll, but there was only one image behind her eyelids.

She tried to be quiet as she slipped between her sleeping comrades to Kakashi's tree. "Kakashi-sensei," she whispered. "Can I come up?"

He shifted just enough for the moonlight to catch his nod, then faded back into the shadows. She scaled the tree hand over hand, swinging between the branches.

"I have second watch," she said, settling in beside him.

He hummed quietly. "That's not for another hour."

"Oh," she murmured. They sat silently for a while. "Sensei," she whispered into the darkness. "I'm sorry."

"For what?" he asked.

"I lost control," she whispered. "I shouldn't have killed him."

"What happened today…was my fault," Kakashi replied slowly. "I put you in that position, Sakura. But you did what you thought was necessary. You were protecting the client, the mission, and most importantly, your teammates."

She shook her head. "I was scared," she said, almost inaudibly. "I was so scared, Kakashi-sensei. They were coming so fast, and there just wasn't time to think. And he was so big, I didn't know what else to do. Then my body was just moving, and that's how I've always trained, you make the strike and then you finish them. I didn't even think about it. Aunt always said you end it in as few strikes as possible. Don't give them the chance to fight back. I just didn't think it would be so…" she trailed off, the flood of words blocked by the one thing that was too hard to say.

Kakashi waited silently. She formed the word in her head, tossed it between brain and lips and felt the air gathering in her throat and couldn't say it. Had to say it, because it was only half the truth and if this was too wrong then the full truth was going to crush her.

"Easy," Sakura finally whispered. She heard him shift beside her, the rustle of fabric. Then a stiff hand tentatively patted her shoulder.

A beating of air and flash of white wings passed in front of them, an owl on the hunt. "Kakashi-sensei. I don't even know his name."

There was a pause, as Kakashi collected his words. "T-and-I will get it out of his partner. If you put in a request, I doubt they would withhold it from you. But Sakura," he added, seriously. "Don't."

"Does that make it easier? Not knowing?"

Again, she waited through a taut silence. "It doesn't make it harder."

"Okay," she whispered.

Much later, when the moon had shifted higher in the sky, Sakura broke the silence. "I think it's my watch, now."

"Hmm," Kakashi agreed. But he didn't leave. She wondered what he was thinking about. She had been reordering everything she had thought she knew about being a ninja. About being alive. All the taijutsu she'd learned from her aunt; all the weapons she'd made and modified under her uncle's tutelage. All the ninjutsu they taught in school; the knives and tags she carried strapped to her hip and thigh. The one kunai with the stained wrappings on its handle.

She wondered if Kakashi was thinking about his first time. How old had he been? How much did the second, and the third affect you? Was it really worse to know their names?

And why, why didn't she feel any different? Other than still slightly sick. Shouldn't this have changed her in some deep way?

As a day's worth of travel and emotional stress pulled at her limbs and murmured susurrations of sleep, the clinical analysis faded. _Quick decision, precise movement, adrenaline, the rush of power at the feel of the blade slipping home._ She jolted back awake and dug her blunt nails deep into her wrists.

When third watch came, she still couldn't face sleeping. She decided Naruto would appreciate the time more. By the time morning woke the birds around them, she and Kakashi were still on guard. They'd both walked the perimeter more than once that night, but each always came back to the tree.

"Time to wake our sleeping beauties," Kakashi said with a smile. Then he dropped out of the tree. Sakura climbed down more sedately, wishing she knew how to fall twenty feet without breaking bones. She also wished Kakashi would have given her the chance to say thank you.

"Can I have your canteen?" he asked mischievously, once she was down. She handed it to him, and he spun the cap off with a flick. Tiptoeing between the sleeping boys' bedrolls, he upended the cold water over their faces. "Rise and shine, my sluggish students."

Naruto gave a high-pitched yelp, and shot bolt upright. "Sensei!" he screeched, once he caught sight of Kakashi's grinning face and the empty canteen. As he continued to shout expletives, Kakashi turned away to pack up his own unused blankets. Sasuke had twitched violently and was now lying stiff as a board and glaring at Kakashi. The noise woke Tazuna as well, so it wasn't long before they were on the road again.

The boat ride was taken in silence, but none of them could stifle their gasps of awe as they came out of the fog and into the Land of Waves. Tazuna smiled smugly, and hopped out of the boat. "Almost home," he said happily, and took a last swig from his nearly empty bottle. "Gotta hold off the drinking once I'm back," he said conspiratorially.

Naruto was uncharacteristically withdrawn as they walked. He seemed jumpy as well, sending quick glances to all sides as he walked alone. Sakura angled her steps to bring them together. "Hey, Naruto," she said quietly.

He shot her a glance from the corner of his eyes, then focused on the bushes and trees passing them by. "Hi, Sakura-chan." His subdued tone surprised her; she honestly couldn't remember a time when he hadn't put some excited emphasis on the last half of the address.

She drifted back, trying not to let the cold-shouldering hurt. It wasn't like people were always happy to see her. Or anyone. He had a right to be disturbed after yesterday. She drew a kunai and spun it in her hand for comfort. But what if she'd irreparably damaged his opinion of her?

It wasn't like it mattered, she decided. She didn't need his approval. Sasuke and she had functioned just fine as a team yesterday, even though Sasuke would barely speak to her.

A shout shattered her thoughts. The kunai thunked into her palm and she lunged for Tazuna. In the ensuing silence, Sakura looked to Kakashi for a sign, but though his hand hovered over his holster, his demeanor held nothing but mild confusion. Tazuna was gaping like a suffocating fish.

"Naruto," she ground out finally, scowling at her teammate. "What are you doing?"

He scratched his head sheepishly and gave a forced laugh. "Just an animal?" They all looked at the little shape legging it away under the greenery. Sasuke snorted.

The second time he flung the kunai, they went to check. "Dinner?" Sakura asked Kakashi hopefully, ignoring the furious grimaces the boys were exchanging to one side.

Kakashi shook his head, appraising the terrified rabbit with his cold eye. "Go," he said to his students, after a pause. When they returned to the road, he walked with a new urgency, though Sakura had no idea why and the boys seemed not to notice.

The sword flying through the air was the last straw on her frayed nerves. The kunai leapt from her hand without thinking. A second joined it in the air and smacked it off course in a shower of sparks. The man standing on the wide blade with his arms crossed didn't even bother to move as the two weapons flew past his head.

"Don't get involved," Kakashi said softly to his students, drawing a new blade. "This man…"

"Has no interest in fighting brats," the man barked. "Not when the Copy Ninja himself stands before me."

The three genin drew in close around their client as Kakashi and the stranger exchanged words. He was in the bingo book, Sakura soon realized. There were outdated copies of that publication in Konoha Public Library, dating back to the first days ninja had slapped their fellows' faces on paper with prices. The Academy had assigned essays on bingo book ninja; she was sure at least one of her classmates had done the Copy Nin.

Why hadn't she ever remembered that that famous nin was Hatake Kakashi, her very own Kakashi-sensei? She tried to pull up any knowledge of their attacker, but even the name, Zabuza, called up only a hazy feeling of familiarity.

Now, though, she would never forget this face. The smirk growing there made her breath come short. Her throat seized up entirely when Kakashi lifted his headband. Cold purpose roiled thickly in his chakra, a deep, muscle-clenching, heart-throbbing desire for violence and the sick conviction that his hand in Zabuza's chest would feel oh-so-good—

She gasped in a shuddering gulp of air. Kakashi turned, and for the first time he smiled at them with both his eyes. "I'll protect you."

There was barely any time for feeling when Zabuza flash stepped between them all and swung his sword. Sakura sprang away. This wasn't the Demon Brother and his careless wide open drives. This was someone her pathetic little kunai and child's muscles had no chance against. She watched in wide-eyed, impotent horror as Kakashi and Zabuza fought.

When Zabuza trapped Kakashi in the water, Sakura realized they were all five dead. She thought about that as Kakashi shouted at them to run from within his watery cage, as Zabuza's clone advanced on them with that same bare-toothed grimace from before. Wondered if she was going to end up looking like the Demon Brother she'd killed, with her throat flayed open and her guts in her hands.

When Naruto crawled out from the massacre of his clones, clutching his headband, she started laughing. Horrible, sobbing laughter. Sasuke stared at her, but Naruto refused to turn. "I'm not giving up," he barked at Zabuza's distant face, but equally to the two teammates standing at his back.

Sakura drew a shuddering breath. "Fuck," she whispered. The word was harsh on her lips. She shifted her grip on her kunai. "So now what?" she yelled at Naruto's quivering back, not expecting any sort of an answer.

Sasuke spread his feet, balancing a little more purposefully on his toes. "Yeah, genius," he chipped in, just loud enough to be heard.

Naruto's shoulder squared. He took careful steps backwards, fading into line with them as they moved forward to meet him. "I have a plan," he whispered. Then they were engulfed in a swirling crowd of clones.

"Protect Tazuna," one of them whispered to her before they launched their suicide attack.

She watched them go hopelessly, not a single Naruto staying behind. Zabuza wasn't going to let him retreat alive again. She backed up until she found Tazuna cowering against a tree, and shoved a knife in his hand. "Make him bleed," she growled, and prepared herself for when Zabuza would come for them.

Her enforced steady breathing stopped again when Sasuke's shuriken turned with a pop into Naruto. When the water dragons reared their heads, she dragged in a gasping breath and grabbed Tazuna's collar, hauling the stunned man bodily up the slope to the nearest low-branched tree and shoving him up. They made it into the leaves as the first waves slammed the trunk of their precarious haven and made the world shake.

She looked for Sasuke and couldn't find him; caught only a glimpse of Naruto's bright yellow head bobbing up and down in the maelstrom before colliding pillars of water threw spray everywhere and obliterated the scene.

When the water calmed and receded, leaving Zabuza's still body washed up amongst waterlogged forest detritus, she scanned frantically for her teammates. Kakashi was hauling himself dripping from the shallows, his red eye spinning slowly, an unfamiliar hardness in his face. And there—she found them, Sasuke wading back into the slow lapping ripples of the lake to help Naruto gain shaky footing and splash to dry land. "Is it over?" Tazuna asked, his head buried in his arms.

Sakura tried to say yes, and nothing came out. She grunted instead and slowly released her white-knuckled grip on his collar.

Kakshi was approaching the body warily, his hands held loosely at his sides, and Sakura was considering climbing out of the tree to join him. Zabuza started stirring, trying to find his feet, when the needles sang through the air and lodged themselves in Zabuza's neck.

Sakura clamped a hand over Tazuna's mouth and they lay still as the corpse hitting the mud in a spray of blood.

* * *

><p>Tazuna carried Kakashi, unconscious, most of the way to the village. The genin stumbled alongside as the adrenaline dissipated and took their strength with it. When finally warm, dry and fussed over by Tazuna's daughter, Sakura brought up the subject of watches. To her surprise, Naruto offered to take first. Lying next to Kakashi in an otherwise empty room, Sakura and Sasuke slept like the dead.<p>

Sasuke shook her awake in the early morning darkness. "Your turn. I'm going to sleep," he muttered. She nodded and crawled reluctantly out of the nest of blankets. Naruto snored softly on the far side of Kakashi. The jounin hadn't moved at all since they'd lowered him carefully onto the futon and pulled a blanket up to his chin. His skin was pale as frost, but he breathed steadily. Sakura exited the room on quiet feet, leaving her teammates to sleep.

She climbed to the roof of the house, toes finding careful purchase on windowsills and gutters. The night was peaceful; a waning half moon and a clear sky lighting up the approaches enough to let her relax a little. She yawned heavily, but the air was chilly and the crickets loud.

She thought of Kakashi as the moon slipped down and the sky crept towards grey. She hoped he would be all right. What would they do if he didn't wake up? They had gotten Tazuna back home safe, but only barely. And it was more than obvious now that the threat was greater than common brigands, or a couple of rogue ninja. Even with Zabuza dead, they might not be able to leave safely.

She thought of Tazuna's daughter and grandson. Of what could happen to them if the four ninja left. Imagined little Inari with a second smile in his throat and his shirt soaked red. She shivered, wishing suddenly for Kakashi-sensei to pat her shoulder and sit next to her in the dark silence.

She didn't come down immediately, when the sun rose and nearly blinded her before she thought to turn her back. She listened to the little family waking up underneath her heels, and watched the village laid out in front of her start to come alive. Fishermen cast off boats prepped in the grey hours; wives threw open doors and spilled children into the dusty streets.

From inside Tazuna's house came Naruto's distinctive voice, raised in a joyful cry. He must have woken for breakfast, Sakura realized, and a small smile twitched at her lips. Naruto had shown a whole new side yesterday. All of them, she mused, had become something new in those short hours. Her smile faded. Naruto and Sasuke had shown strength, resolve, teamwork – the image of the two boys soaked and linked together as they helped each other out of the water drifted across her mind. She, though, she had doubted and feared and hid in a tree while the fight raged.

She swallowed hard and pulled her knees up to her chest under her red tunic. Sasuke had been right to be disappointed when her name was called.

It was Sasuke who found her on the roof, pulling himself up gracefully over the edge, a cloth bundle tied to his belt. She looked at him silently as he sat beside her and offered up the package. It held a pair of riceballs. "Tsunami is worried about you."

"Thanks." She ate slowly, unable to yet shake her dark thoughts. "How's Kakashi-sensei?"

"Still asleep. Naruto's going with Tazuna into town; the builder insisted on the trip. They agreed to stay away from the bridge." Sasuke's hands were quiescent in his lap; Sakura found herself staring at them rather than his face. They were marred, she realized, nearly as much as her own. The Uchiha had always seemed so flawless from a distance. But up close, she could see the faint white lines traced across his knuckles; the cracked calluses raising lumps along the sides of his fingers.

"Are we staying?"

His fingers curled up, bracing outward against his knees. "Until Kakashi wakes up, certainly."

"After?"

"We have to talk to Kakashi."

She snorted, suddenly angry. "And if he takes a week to do it? If he doesn't? Then what? Are we going to hide here, until whoever sent Zabuza finds his next best man and kills us all?"

"Are you suggesting we abandon the mission?" Sasuke didn't sound accusing, only curious. Sakura spared a moment to be grateful she wasn't trying to talk to Naruto.

With a force of will, she lifted her gaze from his long fingers and stared into that pair of dark, calculating eyes. "Tazuna won't be confined much longer. He won't listen to people he considers children, even if we saved his life. The moment he steps onto that bridge, if Kakashi isn't back in the game, he's dead. And we are dead trying to save him. I'm not suggesting anything right now. But I can guarantee you that neither Naruto nor Tazuna are thinking rationally about this situation." Perhaps Sasuke thought she was a coward now.

But he nodded slowly. "If Kakashi hasn't woken up by the end of the day, let's talk. The sharingan…" Confusion furrowed Sasuke's forehead as he spoke. "It takes a lot of strength to control. It must be even worse, to be out-clan. But he should wake again, soon. He is a jounin, after all."

"Lots of jounin don't wake up," she said to the air hanging out over the edge of the roof. But she thought of Kakashi's solid muscle against her back as they sat in a tree, his carefully practiced smiles that always seemed to take just a bit of effort but sometimes felt real. Maybe this time, maybe this man, would be different. "Tonight, then."

Sasuke stood up. "I'm going to go scout out the village. Stay with the family."

She nodded, unwilling to take offense at the order. "Stay safe."

* * *

><p>Tsunami and Inari were happy enough to stay inside. Sakura supposed that having the ninja arrive so damaged had scared them, because when she told them what to do even the little boy didn't argue, his eyes wide and jaw tight. She laid a set of simple wire traps around the windows to give her warning if anyone tried to enter, and buried a line of exploding tags on the walkway to the house. That done, and the mother and son warned not to touch them, she settled in the bedroom by Kakashi's side.<p>

She sharpened her knives in the early afternoon, ate the second rice ball from the morning and refused Tsunami's offers of lunch. It was impolite, she knew, but the scent of the fish wafting in through the seams of the paper walls made her stomach turn. She was tense, scared, and regretting her words to Sasuke that morning. How could they leave?

When Kakashi's eye blinked open, in the orange glow of late afternoon, something came undone in her chest. "Sensei." She wanted to hug him like she would hold her aunt when she came back from missions, bury her face in the blankets over his chest and cry.

* * *

><p>They didn't discuss leaving again. Kakashi had latched onto this mission; though he still looked haggard and could barely walk even with crutches, Sakura could see a glint in his eye that refused to fade. He took them into the forest the next day, assuring them that he would know if Tazuna came under threat while they were gone.<p>

"This isn't going to be an easy mission," he said as they walked. "And none of you are prepared for it. We don't have much time before Gatou and his goons regroup. But we'll make the most of it."

The tree walking was beautiful in its simplicity. Sakura watched Kakashi as he climbed, feeling the chakra coiling in her own soles. Her first step slipped; she compensated, felt the bark crackle underneath her sandal. When it settled in the perfect medium, she knew immediately. It was like the rhythm of a long distance run, or a well-executed takedown. It was smooth elation, and she couldn't help the smile. From there on, the hardest part was holding her abdomen straight as gravity tugged at her shoulders.

Sitting on the highest branch, spinning her kunai, she let the triumph rush through her blood. Sasuke and Naruto were gaping. Kakashi—was he looking approving? It was hard to tell, from so high up.

"What next?" she asked, as Naruto and Sasuke struggled to gain on each other.

Kakashi turned away from the boys. Sakura stood straight as he considered her, teeth clenched. She had been so afraid of him, when she first saw him in the classroom. Now—now she was almost as desperate for his approval as she was for Shizuka's. She had to be worth that night on watch. Make up for her mistakes.

"Come with me," he said, and limped off through the trees.

The stream was a good five minutes walk away. "It's the same method," he said, leaning on one crutch on the burbling surface. "You just have to adapt more quickly."

She tested it from the edge, one foot at a time, pressing until the water held her foot. She splashed in on the second step, slipped on the third. He waited in the center until she joined him, swaying to keep her balance. "Wonderful," she murmured, jumping slightly and landing solidly on liquid.

His eyebrow quirked, and without any other warning he reached out and shoved her, flat-palmed across her collarbones. Sakura yelped and stumbled back, foot dropping through the surface. She fell to a knee and pushed chakra into knee and hands, crouching on the stream until she could drag herself back onto her feet. She was soaked to the hips. "What are you doing?" she demanded.

Kakashi hobbled forward. His eye was twinkling. "Adapt," he ordered, and swung at her head.

Sakura dodged backwards; water splashed up around her feet. She caught her balance, but Kakashi was already there, the crutch jabbing towards her stomach. She knocked it away, and when he tried again she slipped forwards along its outside and took a backknuckle strike to his head. He ducked and swept both her legs.

She hit the water on her face and went under. It was shallow; she scrambled to her feet spluttering and climbed back onto the surface like it was a staircase.

Kakashi leaned on his crutch, and Sakura heard him truly laugh for the first time. She grinned back, hair dripping in her eyes. Then she lunged.

* * *

><p>They went back to Tazuna's house in the late afternoon. The walk took care of most of the damp, but Kakashi dried them out all the way before they went inside. "May as well not drip on Tsunami's floors if we can help it."<p>

He tried to sound cheerful, but his skin was sallow around his single eye, and he was moving slowly. Naruto and Sasuke were nowhere to be found, and Kakashi quickly slipped away to the empty room the ninja had taken over.

Sakura checked her traps, then sat on the porch outside, watching for Naruto and Sasuke. Night fell. With the decrease in visibility, the breaking of the waves on the shore sounded loudly in her ears. When the moon rose, she went inside, shutting the door against the sounds of the strange land.


	3. Chapter 3

_Erm. Yes. It took 3 years to write the bridge fight. Luckily the next ten thousand words are done; I just couldn't get past this darn scene. Here you go._

* * *

><p>Sakura leaned over the edge of the bridge. Waves splashed against the pylons as the ocean investigated this new addition to its geography. Sticking a sealing tag to the outside edge of the bridge, she pushed the slightest dab of chakra into its inked maze. The paper faded to the color and texture of concrete, and disappeared.<p>

"Last one for this side," she told Naruto, standing up again. He leant against the railing next to her, staring up at the blue sky, chewing his lip.

"I still don't get why we're doing this," he whined, picking up the satchel full of paper and glue. "I thought we were trying to not blow up the bridge."

"They're for distractions," Sakura said. They wove between workers to the other side of the bridge. Naruto handed her a fresh brush full of glue and a tag. "If anyone does try for the bridge, we're going to need all the preparation we can get. Most of these are flash tags."

"Yeah, so why aren't we training? Sasuke's training." Naruto cast an envious glance back at the shore.

Sakura held out a hand for another tag and moved a few meters down the railing. "Because I'm the only one who can do this," Sakura said, trying not to let too much smugness show. Kakashi had shown her the trick this morning, emphasizing the control needed to prime a tag without burning out the chakra circuits. Remote detonation flash tags were more delicate than the standard explosive tags. "And I need you to help me."

Naruto snorted. "You don't need anyone to help you."

Sakura shot him a glance. Was that supposed to be a compliment? But Naruto was staring at the sky again, and picking his nose. "That's disgusting, Naruto."

"It itched," he protested, flicking a booger into the water. "More glue?"

* * *

><p>"I thought you said we were going to train." Sasuke glowered darkly at the road, the people, Tazuna's back, and especially at Kakashi.<p>

Kakashi looked up from his cup of purple shaved ice, having somehow already halfway consumed the treat, without ever removing his mask. His single eye curved at Sasuke. "This is training."

"We're following an old man. How is this training?"

"We're shadowing our client," Kakashi corrected, raising one finger and shaking it at Sasuke.

"That's still not training!"

Tazuna turned down a side street towards the waterfront. They followed a few paces behind. Kakashi smacked his lips under the mask, and stuck his green plastic spoon back in the ice. Another big bite was gone. "What have you learned today?"

"Nothing!" Sasuke snapped. They came out of the street onto the docks, where Tazuna called greetings to the few folk mending nets and sluicing down the tables where the early morning catch had already been processed and sold or packed.

"Surely you can think of something."

Sasuke clenched his teeth. "Fish smell terrible," he grated out.

"Well, that's something," Kakashi said. There might have been a tinge of disappointment in his tone. "Here, I'll trade you one. Two of the people we've passed are informing for Gatou."

"What? Who?" Sasuke looked around, eyes catching on the woman sweeping dust out the front door of a tea shop, two men carrying a stack of boards down the road. "How do you know?"

Kakashi crumpled his empty ice cup in one hand and shoved it in a pocket. "By paying attention, Sasuke. Other people can be interesting, sometimes."

* * *

><p>When the waiting finally ended, Sakura wished it hadn't with every strung-tight muscle in her body, every beat of her rabbiting heart. Zabuza stood on the bridge, the masked ninja beside him. There was no anger, no hatred, just the cold intention to spill blood. Sakura was sure that this time, she was going to die.<p>

"Sakura," Kakashi sad quietly, never taking his eyes from the two ninja slowly approaching. "My summons tells me there are reinforcements coming for the bridge. I need you to slow them down."

"Me?" Her voice was very high and her heartbeat kicked up another notch. "Alone?"

"Yes," he said. "Pakkun is waiting for you at the treeline." The fabric of his mask rippled, as if he were smiling. "You can do this."

She nodded, and began to back away. Zabuza made as if to reach for a throwing star, but Kakashi stepped in front of her. "You don't have time to fight her, Bloody Mist."

Zabuza laughed. "It hardly matters. Hunting her down will be nothing but sport when this is over. Run little girl," he shouted. "Run and hide."

Sakura turned and ran.

Just inside the trees, a tiny dog cut in front of her path. "Sakura," he said, and she pulled up short, startled. "I am Pakkun," the dog continued. "Kakashi holds my summoning contract."

"You're how he was watching Tazuna when we left to train," she realized.

"Yes, with the rest of my pack," Pakkun said. "Now, hurry. Gatou sent half his men through the forest, and half on boats around the back of the bridge. We must not let the bridge get surrounded. Follow me." She might not have predicted such confidence from a pug, but right now she was grateful to have orders to follow.

They ran into the trees, Sakura following the flapping of the dog's blue cape through the undergrowth. After five minutes, Pakkun slowed. Through the trees, Sakura saw a band of men carrying nasty looking weapons. "There are dozens of them," she breathed.

Pakkun grunted. "That's why we can't let them reach the bridge."

"I can't fight that many men." There had to be at least thirty, each one carrying some wicked blade or heavy club. Each one rough and scarred and mean-looking. Pakkun stared up at her from under the folds of his face said nothing.

She fumbled in her belt pouch, feeling her supplies. The edges of shuriken, a coil of wire, the crinkle of a pack of explosive tags —

She turned around and ran back through the trees, Pakkun at her heels. "Where are you going?" he barked. "Girl!"

When she had half a kilometer of distance, she stopped and pulled out the tags. "They're coming straight towards the bridge. They'll have to pass here."

Pakkun barked. "Smart pup."

She buried the tags under a couple inches of dirt, and stuck some to the backs of tree trunks. She still had all six of the packs Shikamaru had paid her with, and she used them all. When the whole area was trapped, she faded back into the trees. It wasn't a long wait until the first of the men appeared.

They were hurrying, excited for the fight. Sakura waited until the group was almost through, then set off the buried tags. The shockwave made her ears ring.

Then the screaming started, and the smell of burning flesh and hair filled the forest. The smoke cleared quickly, which was one advantage of chakra tags rather than chemical exposives. As it settled, she saw four men crawling away from the explosions — six lying immobile on the ground — a smear that might have been one — or two — an arm —

She set off the tags on the trees, and six huge trunks came crashing down on the still standing men.

Someone's legs twitched, but his body was pulverized under the fallen trunk. A man stared up at the sky as blood pulsed from the stumps of his thighs. Shouts, and screams, and sobs replaced the ringing in her ears, and Sakura stumbled back further into the trees, away from the destruction. "Pakkun—"

"Back to the bridge," the dog said gruffly, and Sakura was more than happy to obey.

No one followed them. Sakura stopped once to vomit violently into the dirt. Pakkun waited a few meters away, without a word.

On the bridge, Naruto crouched beside Sasuke in a circle of shattered ice. Sasuke lay unmoving, impaled by dozens of needles. Sakura stumbled to a halt. "No, please no." Kakashi and Zabuza fought through swirling mist, their blades sending sparks of light bouncing from the water droplets. Naruto looked like he was crying.

She ran towards him, clasped Sasuke's cold, limp hand in her own. "Is he—"

Naruto couldn't speak, but his eyes were wide and filled with grief. Through the mist, a howling rose up like a pack of wolves on the hunt. Then the screaming of lightning.

The rest of the fight was chaos. Men poured over the edges of the bridge as the mist cleared, Zabuza and Kakashi both blood covered and swaying, turned towards the end of the bridge. A small man leaning on a gold-handled cane at the far end of the bridge smiled. "Kill them all," he said, and the men charged.

Sakura ducked a sword, sliced a kunai along the man's thigh and backed away. Another drove a mace down at her head; she rolled backwards and threw a shuriken at his face. It missed, and the swordsman charged again, rage on his face and his blade whistling through the air.

Naruto stood over Sasuke, snarling at the attackers, waves of chakra rolling off of him. The men in front of him hesitated, pushed back by the intensity of his rage. But the bandit approaching behind him lifted a rusty scythe and swung.

Sakura turned and threw her kunai at the scythe-wielder. It grazed across his face, sending him stumbling backwards. And in the moment of distraction, the other man's sword bit deep into her shoulder blade. Sakura screamed.

Then Kakashi was there, and the swordsman fell to the ground. Kakashi moved, and the man with the mace crumpled, his neck twisted all the way around. Another Kakashi was pulling his hand out of the ribcage of the scythe-wielder, and Sakura wondered why there were so many Kakashis on the bridge all of a sudden. And now the villagers were here? Blood slipped down her back, and a dark fuzz grew around the edges of her vision.

That was alright, though, she thought muzzily. Noise and explosions and violence still raged around them, but the many Kakashis kept the area around the genin clear of everything but corpses.


	4. Chapter 4

_Lots of encouragement and feedback on the last chapter - thank you all so much! It's great to see so many of you stuck around, and to get such thoughtful criticisms._

* * *

><p>Kakashi carried Sasuke back to Tazuna's house in his arms. The boy couldn't stand; Haku's needles had been non-fatal, but precise. Sasuke protested in Kakashi's grip at the indignity. "Stop squirming. It's hurting you, and it's hurting me." The exhaustion flattened all emotion from his voice, even as pain flared across the slice on his chest. Sasuke gave up.<p>

Tazuna, without prompting, pulled Sakura onto his back and followed blindly at Kakashi's heels. The pressure bandage on her shoulder stalled the bleeding, but she was glassy-eyed and silent.

"Is she okay? Sakura, are you okay? Does it hurt? I think Sasuke's okay, he glared at me. There weren't that many needles, right? I mean, yeah, it was pretty scary, I mean I wasn't scared, but if you were gonna be scared it would be for that, right? Sasuke, he just jumped in front of me. I don't know why. He just shoved me back and they all went into him instead of me, but he's strong. He's like the strongest. He's totally okay, the jerk. Wimp, I say, getting carried."

Kakashi closed his eyes briefly as they walked, tried to tune Naruto's nervous chatter out. At least one of the children wasn't hurt, though Kakashi had no idea how much of that was good luck, and how much the Fox. He supposed it hardly mattered.

They left the villagers milling on the bridge, tending their wounded and sorting the bodies. Some of the civilian wounded he'd glimpsed likely wouldn't live through the night; but that wasn't his problem. And the burials would be a task for the next day, Kakashi guessed.

His living were more important, so Kakashi led his team back to Tazuna's quiet house and the airy room that had become the ninjas' unofficial home. He laid Sasuke gently on the floor and with a quick twist of chakra that left his stomach lurching and spots in his eyes, unsealed the extra medical kit from a storage scroll.

As bad as Sakura's slash was, he worried more about the senbon wounds. He wouldn't know if Haku had poisoned any of the needles unless or until Sasuke began reacting to a toxin. That was what Kakashi hated most about senbon. For now, he had to clean the punctures, and make sure Sasuke hadn't been permanently paralyzed.

By the time Kakashi was sure Sasuke's limbs all worked and his nerves were intact, Sasuke had declared that he wished Kakashi never born, cursed the mission history that had left Kakashi alive and uncrippled, and pretended he wasn't crying twice. But Sasuke was whole, and Kakashi wondered again at the strangeness of Haku.

"Hey, Kakashi-sensei, can I help?" Naruto asked quietly, from where he hovered uncertainly in the doorway. "I mean, is there anything I can do?"

He almost said no, almost snapped at the boy to stop bouncing and wringing his hands and to go away. He breathed in slowly, focused on the feeling of his lungs expanding and the slash on his chest pulling with it. "If you can keep them quiet, call up a couple clones."

Naruto nodded vigorously, and in a moment there was a cacophony of whispers in the hallway. "I said no one talks but me," Naruto hissed, and a dozen voices responded with "Jerk," and "Stupid," and "I don't take orders from you."

But only two clones came through the door, and they were both sucking their lips into their mouths and tiptoeing. Ten more heads peered around the doorframe. "I can't just do two," Naruto said apologetically, then shook his arm at the rest of them. "Go do something useful outside or something."

He and his two silent clones knelt down beside Kakashi. "What do we do?"

Kakashi dropped a wet cloth in his hands, and a pile of sealed antiseptic wipes in front of him. "Clean your hands while I talk. The first danger from senbon, if they don't kill you outright, is permanent nerve damage." Naruto's eyes went very wide. "Sasuke doesn't have that."

"Oh good," Naruto breathed, and Sasuke rolled his eyes.

"The second danger is poison. One of you," Kakashi pointed randomly at one of the clones, "watches Sasuke constantly, at all times, for the next eight hours. If he gets cold, or sweaty, his heartbeat slows or his breathing gets fast — basically if anything changes," he amended, when Naruto's eyes started looking panicked at the list, "you get me immediately. And don't give him anything," he added, just in case. You never knew what Naruto might decide to do, and even Kakashi had no idea what interactions there might be between pain drugs and a potential poison.

"The other two of you get to learn how to clean a puncture." Kakashi picked up a pair of tweezers, a bottle of antiseptic, and a sealed gauze pad. "Infection used to be one of the biggest killers of active duty ninja." Rin had loved that little factoid. "Deep punctures are some of the most dangerous wounds you can get out of things that don't kill you in the first hour. First, remove any debris from the mouth of the wound, and anything that's worked its way deeper. Senbon usually leave clean holes, but be careful." He picked a few fibers from a hole in Sasuke's arm, and wiped the tweezer clean. "Rinse the wound with antiseptic." He poured it out liberally, and Sasuke hissed and gritted his teeth. "Cover it with gauze."

Naruto nodded vigorously. Kakashi held out the tweezers. He accepted them carefully, and his clone took the bottle. Kakashi watched Naruto nervously begin to inspect another of Sasuke's wounds. "Get on with it," the boy muttered, and Naruto's jaw firmed up.

"Shut up, jerk, I'm the doctor here." He plucked something from the hole. Sasuke grimaced.

"You're not a doctor."

Naruto splashed the bottle over the hole, and Sasuke had to stop talking. Kakashi watched him cover up three holes, getting more confident each time, until he was sure Naruto could manage. The boys sniped at each other, but Kakashi didn't really care. With two clones watching his every move, and his inexhaustible energy, Naruto was doing a better job than Kakashi would with his pounding headache and blurry eyes.

He forced himself to his feet, and moved over to where Sakura lay on her stomach by the wall. Tazuna stood up when he got there. "If you don't need me, I'm going back to the bridge. I think Inari is still there."

"Mm," Kakashi responded. He put the rest of the medkit down beside Sakura, and sank to the floor. "I need to stitch you up.

She turned her head, and nodded, her cheek sliding across the floorboards. "Swallow this if you can." He helped her to a sitting position until she'd gotten the pill down and a swig of water. "It'll help with the pain."

He palmed a different pill for himself and swallowed it dry. The rush of chemical chakra disoriented him, swirling through fragile pathways and washing up against the fading remnants of a temporary medical seal inked onto his stomach. Of course, the medics had forbidden soldier pills and chakra-intensive justu until he was entirely healed. He hadn't expected to need either on a C-rank mission; he'd thought he was healed enough for a milk run. At a new surge of turbulence under his skin, Kakashi closed his eyes to wait for the effects to settle into something manageable.

When he looked again, Sakura was watching him with glazed green eyes. "I need to cut your shirt off," he said, and she turned her face away.

He left the red tunic pooled underneath her, and kept himself between her and the other bickering genin. He scrubbed his hands clean again. The iodine stung in his scraped knuckles.

The sword had bit deep into the meat of her shoulder, and carved a deep groove down her shoulderblade. It grew shallower towards the bottom, as her roll had taken her away from the swing, but it was nearly as long as his forearm, and the hasty bandages were soaked through. He peeled them off, and rinsed out the wound. She shivered silently.

"Try not to move," he murmured, and started from the top. His stitches were tiny and neat, even though his hands shook slightly from the soldier pill. When it was done, he taped a gauze pad over it and wiped his hands down again.

He dragged a blanket over from the pile of bedrolls in the corner, and draped it over her bare back. Without a the chakra-healing of a qualified medic, it would heal slowly and leave a heavy scar. But it would heal. "Just sleep, if you can."

"What now, Kakashi-sensei?" Naruto asked. One Naruto clone was seated cross-legged by Sasuke's head, starting intently at him. Every few seconds, it reached out and touched Sasuke's pale forehead. Amazingly, despite the overzealous concern, Sasuke appeared to be sleeping, wrapped up in Naruto's hideous orange jacket.

The other two Narutos looked at Kakashi with slightly desperate, over-bright blue eyes. Kakashi slid himself over to the wall and leaned back. "The village will be celebrating tonight," he said. "All the people who aren't sitting with the dead. Go out and enjoy it, if you want." Naruto hesitated, glancing between his teammates and his teacher. "Go find Inari," Kakashi added, remembering the little boy and Naruto's strange attachment to him. "He probably needs a friend tonight."

"Okay," Naruto said. "But I'll leave that me here with you, and if you need me, you just send me, okay? And if Sasuke gets sick, you send me. Or if Sakura gets sick. Or if you —"

"Got it," Kakashi said, and couldn't fight the smile as Naruto's clone crossed his arms and tried to look responsible. "Go."

With a final glance back, Naruto left. "And you go sit outside or something," Kakashi said to the clone. "You've already got that one watching Sasuke." It almost refused, but Kakashi gave it a squinty glare, and it followed Naruto out.

Kakashi gave himself thirty seconds. He closed his eyes and listened to his students breathing, listened to himself breathing. _We're alive. Tazuna is alive. The bridge is intact. Mission success._ In all honesty, it had been a good day.

After the thirty seconds was up, he stripped off his vest and his outer shirt, then cut the skin-tight inner layer loose from the drying blood along his chest. Painkillers would dull his mind, and with Sasuke still in uncertain condition, he wasn't going to risk it.

With a last deep breath, he released the chakra that had been holding the cut closed. Blood began to seep down his chest again, and his head swam. He stitched himself up faster than he had Sakura, less concerned with either his own pain or skin.

When he was done, he put his torn outer shirt back on and pulled his vest over his shoulders. Covered, he glanced across the room at the boys. The Naruto clone still stared singlemindedly at a sleeping Sasuke, his lips moving silently as he counted Sasuke's breaths. To his left, Sakura lay under her blanket. Her eyes were open and she was watching him.

"What was that?" she asked, her voice a hoarse whisper.

"What?"

"You weren't bleeding."

He blinked at her with his one open eye. She had noticed that? "An old trick. Make your chakra sticky. Use it to hold yourself together."

She considered that with narrow eyes. He waited for her to figure it out, wondering if she would. "Like the tree-climbing," she said. "But internal. It would keep you from losing too much blood, if you could block up the severed veins. But it would keep you from clotting." Kakashi hummed in agreement, surprised that she'd figured it out. Her eyes drifted shut, and he listened to her shallow breathing in the quiet. The faint sounds of revelry began to drift through the open window. There would be a lot of drinking in the village tonight. In celebration of the victory, and commemoration of the dead.

She spoke again. "You'd have to be careful. Too much and you'd damage it worse, like crushing bark. If you lost control…"

He looked back at her, but her eyes were still closed, and she almost seemed to be talking to herself. And then she actually did fall asleep, or so he assumed, as the silence stretched into hours, backed by the faint noises from outside, and punctuated by the occasional rustling of the clone's jacket as he checked Sasuke's pulse.

It had been a good day, Kakashi thought again. For the most part. Wounds would heal. He would think about how his kids had gotten those wounds in the morning. Think about Sasuke flinging himself in front of Naruto into a hail of senbon; think about Sakura turning her back on an attacker to distract one of Naruto's. Think about the kind of half-assed teamwork that left children smeared into paste under two-ton boulders.

Not now. For now, they were all alive, and he would listen to their breathing as the night bled away into dawn.

* * *

><p>They dragged the bodies from the bridge out to an empty strip of ground in the grey haze before dawn. Kakashi and his genin, and a small group of villagers. Tazuna refused to come. "Let them rot," he suggested. "We can put the heads on the bridge."<p>

When the digging had started, Kakashi left Naruto and Sakura with the villagers. Following Pakkun, he brought Sasuke and a pair of shovels into the forest to deal with Sakura's ambush.

Whatever else Gatou had done, he'd paid his men well. Gold bought men, and Gatou had made sure that he had a lot of both. The group at the bridge had been more than enough to handle, even with Zabuza on their side at the end. Kakashi was grateful that this half of Gatou's hired army hadn't made it to the battle.

The carnage made him a little less grateful. Sasuke clapped his hand over his mouth as if to swallow back nausea, then dropped it when he realized he had reacted. Kakashi blinked around at the newly made clearing. Animals had been at work last night.

"Sakura…did this…" Sasuke started looking even sicker. Kakashi put down the shovel he'd been carrying.

Dredging up the bare scraps of chakra that had returned to him last night, Kakashi put his hands together. The ground shuddered open beneath the worst of the mess. "Scrape whatever else you can into it," he said flatly, and sat down heavily.

When it was done, and when he had enough strength back, Kakashi closed the earth back up.

He took a break when they returned to the main gravesite, sitting in the shade of a tree and contemplating the idiocy of taking another soldier pill. Pakkun strolled up beside him, and sat down.

"What?"

"What do you mean, what?" Pakkun growled.

"You're pissed off." Kakashi reached out a shaking hand to scratch Pakkun's head, but the dog moved away and glared. "Really pissed off."

"Yes," Pakkun snapped.

"I'll ask why, but know that I'm probably too tired to care right now."

Pakkun bared his teeth. Kakashi raised an eyebrow. "Both your injured genin are bleeding again. Even a scent-blind idiot like you should be able to smell it."

"And?"

"And they should be resting, not digging graves."

"Can't leave the bodies to rot." No matter what Tazuna wanted. "It's unhealthy."

"Get the civilians to do it." Pakkun snapped his teeth again, and his facial folds shook. It wasn't nearly as amusing as it should have been. Kakashi flared his chakra, but the dog just barked with laughter. "You aren't scary when you're weaker than a suckling pup, boy. Stop punishing your charges."

Kakashi narrowed his eye at the summons. "I can still banish you, Pakkun," he said softly.

"Hatake." The human word was almost lost in the snarl.

"They need to learn that there are consequences."

Pakkun snorted. "There are consequences for everything, you blind, mewling, flea-infested runt. This isn't teaching them what you think it is. And ripping up day-old wounds digging graves for dead men is not good pedagogy."

Kakashi shrugged.

Pakkun's jaws opened, and his body tensed, as if he were about to spring at Kakashi. A single feral growl slipped from a human throat. Kakashi loomed. Pakkun backed down, but refused to give up. "Did you even notice that the loud one isn't using clones?"

"Yes," Kakashi said, the growl still rumbling in his tone.

"Did you wonder why?" Pakkun didn't give him a chance to answer. "It's not because he's out of chakra, like some whelps I could name. That boy is going to dig until his hands blister. The other two are going to dig until they collapse, and they're not going to be thinking that the reason they're in pain is because they didn't _'work together as a team' _or whatever stupid-ass bullshit is in your self-obsessed little brain." He put his paws up on Kakashi's leg and leaned in towards his summoner's frozen face. "Your kids are not okay, and you are making it worse."

Pakkun held Kakashi's gaze. When it had stretched almost long enough to be a challenge, he dropped down and walked away.

"Fuck," Kakashi muttered under his breath, at Pakkun's retreating back.

Then he pulled himself to his feet, and shoved his hands in his pockets. A few words to the leader of the civilian group, and then he rounded up his genin. "They can handle the rest."

Naruto stopped him. "But isn't it our responsibility? Don't we…owe it to them?"

"No," Kakashi said sharply. Anger flared up, at Pakkun's harsh lecture, or the stupidity of children, he didn't know. He didn't care. "We already put the Mist-nin in the ground. The rest of this is just sanitation." Both Naruto and Sakura flinched, and Naruto looked like he might protest again. Sasuke stared at Kakashi with hooded eyes. "Two of you are injured, and this is not worth it."

"I can stay," Naruto suggested. "Help out a bit more."

"No." Kakashi walked away, and after a few moments, the genin followed.

* * *

><p>The fever hit Sasuke that afternoon. It was infection, not poison, but by nightfall he was delirious. Naruto sat by his side, bathing his forehead and ordering him to get better, in increasingly outlandish ways. Sakura drifted in and out of the sickroom, checking in on Sasuke, then disappearing for hours.<p>

Kakashi cracked another soldier pill between his teeth and used the heat to call back the rest of the pack. They scattered through the village and the surrounding area, but brought back no signs of vengeful remnants of Gatou's gang.

* * *

><p>Naruto swung himself over the edge of the roof, then chakra-walked up to where Sakura sat near the ridge. A tile cracked under one of his feet, and he winced. "His fever broke," he said, when he sat down. "Kakashi-sensei says he's going to be okay."<p>

He said it like he was trying to reassure himself, so Sakura smiled at him. "Good."

Naruto chewed on his lip, and stared out over the blue waters. "He got hurt 'cause of me, you know. Haku threw those senbon at me."

Sakura glanced at him, sitting where Sasuke had only a week ago. Naruto chewed his cheek, sending furtive looks her way. She caught his eyes and he flinched. "He shouldn't have done that," he muttered, looking away. "Stupid ass."

"Why not?" The man with the sword, the man with the scythe… Had Naruto seen?

He curled around his knees, shielding himself. His hair was messy; freshly washed. The scent of dirt and sweat still clung to his clothing, the way it did to her. "Because he got hurt."

The circular logic pissed her off. But that wasn't what he was saying. "You're worth it, Naruto."

"No I'm not," he whispered. He rubbed the back of one hand, staring at the unmarked skin.

"Hey." Sakura reached out, and gently put a hand on top of his hands. "You are, Naruto. Believe me."

He went still under her touch, then looked up at her. When he leaned towards her, she didn't catch on immediately. Then she shoved her hand into the center of his chest and jerked backwards. Her shoulder burned at the movement. "Naruto, stop."

Horror spilled across his face and he scrambled back as well. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to — Sakura, I'm — don't hate me — "

She swallowed, tried to calm down. His attempted kiss had startled her; she was still so on edge from the last few days. Her heart thudded in her chest, her chakra tingled under her skin. Was she ever going to be able to feel calm again? "You're my teammate, Naruto. I don't hate you. Just — just don't."

"Yeah, okay." He stood up; another tile cracked under his feet. "Shit. I'm going to go, okay? Okay. See you Sakura. Bye." He slid down the roof and nearly lost his balance at the edge. Then he jumped down and she heard the door slide open and shut.

Sakura pulled her knees up and buried her face in her arms. If she was crying, there was no one to see.

* * *

><p>"That's a lot of tattoos."<p>

Sitting on the edge of the engawa that wrapped around two sides of the house, Kakashi smoothed down the new bandage he'd just replaced on his chest before turning to glance over his shoulder. Sakura watched him through an open door, a bowl of water in one hand and a riceball in the other. She lifted it. "Thought I'd see if Sasuke could eat yet."

"Then you're in the wrong place, aren't you." He was too tired to deal with this right now. Too tired to put together the words and the misdirections and the fake smiles. His chakra wasn't renewing the way it should be, and he'd barely slept in the last two nights.

"What's with all the ink?"

"I'm a punk rocker," he said, deadpan, and reached for his shirt.

She didn't leave. "I've seen those before." Her eyes tracked the soft folds of cloth as he tugged his shirt over the splay of ink and scars.

His eye narrowed. "You've seen what before?"

"Those seals," she said, brow furrowed slightly, eyes going unfocused as she searched her memory for something. "They're chakra transformers, I think. Or maybe stabilizers?"

Crossing his legs, Kakashi turned to face her fully. "And how would you know that?" How could she recognize them from a brief glance, amongst all the hundreds of other characters engraved on his skin?

Sakura shrugged, put the bowl down and settled the rice ball carefully next to it. She obviously intended to follow this to the end. "I saw them when Bachiko was dying. The medics were trying to limit the chakra flow to her liver and strain out her earth nature, or something. My uncle didn't really explain." Sakura frowned, one finger tracing patterns absently in the air. "But I'm pretty sure that's what they were doing."

Kakashi had been shown dozens of charts of dozens of theories about what Rin's seals were. Medic after medic had pointed out different strands - _this section is linking the main channel along the optic nerve, this pattern suppresses your local immune response_s — but in the end, as they shuffled their diagrams around and dilated his eyes, they'd all eventually admitted they had no idea exactly what Rin had done. They had no idea why it worked. _We're positive that this is a scaffolding for pathway regrowth, and it's certainly served it's purpose already. Complexity can pave the way for future problems, so we should probably take these sections out. _But they never would, too afraid the whole web would collapse.

Kakashi never paid much attention. Early on, it had hurt too much to listen. Later, he stopped caring. Either the eye would work, or his body would reject it, or it would kill him. Three options, and whichever way, it was no use thinking about it.

Sakura had pulled the pieces out with the briefest of glances. Admittedly, the pieces that the medics had been most reliably able to identify, the ones that they touched up every now and again as the patterns burned away, so they stood out most strongly against his patchwork skin. But still.

"Bachiko?"

She shrugged. "I never really knew her. My uncle's older sister. She died when I was seven, I think."

Died in the central hospital, painted in chakra transformers and rate limiters while her own elemental nature turned her body against her. The calculations slid through Kakashi's mind almost unconsciously: given Sakura's uncle's probable age, if his sister had joined the forces at the usual age, she would have been in the war for most of the worst years. Would have gone through the hasty field treatments, cycled in from the front and out as fast as the medics could force her broken pieces to grow back together.

Kakashi rolled his shoulders, wondering briefly if that was going to be how he died. His body revolting after too many attempts to force cells to heal, to grow again faster than they were meant to. His chakra bursting and rioting until his flesh ran rampant and choked him from the inside out.

Cancer.

"Good memory," he said, and wondered belatedly if he should have said _I'm sorry._

She grinned at him, a little lopsided. "Top of my class." She picked up the water and the rice and disappeared down the hall.

Kakashi remained facing the door for awhile after, staring blankly at the place where she'd stood. She seemed…normal. Which was good. Right? He'd expected…tears, at least at some point. Tension and discomfort, like after the encounter with the Demon Brothers. But she seemed collected, in control. But Pakkun's furious words still chewed at his mind, even if his old friend hadn't talked to him since that exchange. Was he missing something?

Sakura certainly wasn't missing much. The girl kept surprising him. He was going to have to do something about that.


	5. Chapter 5

_Doop doop. New chapter. Unfortunately this is the last section already buffered until the end of the chuunin exams, so this crazy every-week schedule may drop off. But hey, three chapters in three weeks isn't so bad, considering the precedent ;)_

* * *

><p>Kakashi felt four weeks of tension drain from his shoulders as the walls of the village began to glint burnt orange through the trees. Naruto whooped and started running, his pack bouncing wildly on his back. Kakashi made a mental note to tell him to cinch it down better when traveling. But now was not the time, because even Sasuke's pace had picked up and Sakura's hands were clenching on her pack straps. "Meet you there," he said, and flickered.<p>

He stopped Naruto at the gate. The kid bounced on his toes and talked a mile a minute, something about all the people he was going to see and all the food he was going to eat and _wow_ wouldn't somebody be so excited to hear _all _his awesome adventures! Kakashi tuned him out and waited for the rest of the team to jog out from the trees.

He held up one finger when they gathered, dirt smudged faces looking up at him hopefully. "Report first. Then you can go eat noodles and bore your friends." Naruto groaned, which he expected, but Sakura cast anxious glances down the street and shifted from foot to foot, which was unexpected. She knew protocol better than any of the rest of them. He tucked that little thought away with all the others and headed for the Hokage Tower.

Kakashi passed over the mission scroll when the desk chuunin extended a hand for it, then tossed pens at each of his tiny subordinates. "Get writing, my cute little ducklings."

Naruto wrote with his tongue stuck between his teeth, underlining a lot of words and jabbing excitedly at the page. Sasuke was neat, precise, and when Kakashi glanced over the report, rather terse. Sakura's was textbook, headers and footnotes and an exactly placed signature at the bottom. He dismissed them as they handed him the papers. Once the room was free of elbow-high ninja, Kakashi shuffled his own report to the top of the stack – a few brief paragraphs and a slanted henohenomoheji – and added a couple lines to the bottom of the page. He gave them to the chuunin. "I need to speak to the Hokage."

The Sandaime would need to hear of the Kyuubi's chakra, and Sasuke's sharingan. And though he didn't trust the Psych department as far as he could throw them, the Hokage might have some wisdom for him. The genin hadn't said a word about the bridge or its aftermath on the entire trip back, but Pakkun had been right. They were not okay, as much as they hid it, and Kakashi was out of his depth.

To be honest, he'd been out of his depth since the Hokage first ordered him to take the team. But he was damned if he was going to be responsible for any more dead children.

Anyways, he had to explain the C-to-A categorization shift. It always helped to have the Hokage on your side when you asked for a pay upgrade.

* * *

><p>Sakura ran home from the Tower. She dodged pedestrians and donkey carts, taking side streets to avoid the market squares that would be packed shoulder to shoulder. Now that she could chakra-walk, she thought, she would find time to learn to use the roof route.<p>

Her uncle had left a note on the kitchen target, pinned up with a senbon. _Welcome home! Away for five days. Don't worry, no danger. Love you._ It was dated three days ago. A heaviness settled in her stomach, and the last bit of anticipation at coming home drained away. She pulled the paper down and added her own note to the bottom before pinning it back up, just in case anyone returned while she was out. _I'm home. All good. _

She took a shower and changed into clean clothes. She put her smelly, stained mission shirt to soak in the sink, and went into the master bedroom to find one of Iwao's shirts. His smell comforted her. Cinnamon and sweat, a hint of Shizuka's sharply scented astringent.

Enveloped in the too-large shirt, she made tea, switching the radio on to local news. She dropped her head to the table with a sigh, as Yuzuru Nanri talked with Konoha's newest upcoming young author about his historical novel covering political intrigue and affairs during some dynasty Sakura knew nothing about. The Academy had been rather sketchy on history that didn't pertain directly to Hidden Village politics.

Banging on the door woke her. Her hand was at her thigh before her eyes opened, but she'd taken her holster off to shower and left it in the bedroom. Her hand closed on loose fabric. Her heart pounded. Someone was shouting. "Sakura! Sakura!"

She groaned, and shoved herself to her feet. "Ino, you stupid pig," she groused, yanking the door open. "You scared me half to death!"

Ino snorted and barged past her into the house. "I had to hear from Naruto that you were back. _Naruto, _Billboard. Seriously, you couldn't come say hi?" She snatched Sakura's cup from the table and sniffed. "You got any more of this?"

The water had cooled in the pot while she slept. "I can make more, if you want." Ino shrugged and drained the tepid tea from Sakura's cup in one long slurp. Sakura sighed and put the kettle on. She was doing a lot of sighing today. She decided to blame it on being tired.

"We're all going out for barbeque tonight," Ino was saying, splayed out in a chair, knees apart. "Chouji and Shikamaru and me, and we invited Sasuke and Team Eight, too. Time for all us genin to catch up, don't you think?"

"I'm exhausted, Ino," Sakura began. They'd taken the trip back much faster than the one out, since there was no Tazuna to pace for. It had been harder than Sakura had been expecting; none of the boys ever seemed to tire. But she'd forced her aching legs to keep up.

Ino put up a hand. "No. Nuh-uh. You don't get to do that. You're coming. What would you do here anyway? Your aunt and uncle aren't home."

"I'd sleep," Sakura said, but the argument was already lost. "What about Naruto?"

"What about him?" Ino was giving appraising looks at her hair. "We're taking the braid out tonight, darling."

"Did you invite him?"

Ino grimaced. "You're going to invite him," Sakura said flatly. "He's my teammate." He was unbelievably loud, and incomprehensibly stupid sometimes, but— "He is my teammate, Ino, and I'm not going otherwise." She had a ten-inch scar on her back, and no illusions about who had turned the tide against Zabuza. Twice.

"I get it, I get it." Her friend pursed her lips. "I hope you don't regret this, though. I am not sitting next to him." Ino sprang to her feet, then, a smile showing off glinting white teeth. "Come on, then! I'm going to do your hair, and you're going to tell me _all _about the mission. What should I ask Sasuke about?"

It was nice, sitting there with her eyes closed, Ino's fingers combing gently through her hair. There was afternoon sun on her bedroom floor, and Ino had carried up the radio and tuned it to a music station. Somebody was crooning about lost love and the leaves turning in the autumn. She was home.

Ino tugged sharply on her hair. "Come on, Sakura! Tell me about Sasuke! I've got to know what to ask tonight, so he talks to me."

"Mmm." Sakura thought back over the weeks of the mission. Cold nights on hard ground; walking circles around the perimeter. Sasuke's monosyllabic answers to questions, his death glares when woken up for watch. "Ask him about the fish."

"Was he very heroic?" Ino sighed wistfully. "Did he feed you all one night, when there was nothing to eat? Was there _firelight?_"

"He got scales in his hair and had nine kids standing in the street laughing at him." Sakura grinned at the memory. "Client's grandson was trying to teach him to fillet fish."

Ino cuffed her upside the head. "Not helpful, Sakura. I'm trying to get him to like me, not rub his nose in his humiliations."

"It was funny," Sakura protested, but quietly. It had been rather funny, though Sasuke himself had not thought so. The radio switched to advertisements; she fiddled with the knobs until another music station came into focus.

"What good are you if you can't give me hints?" Ino grouched as she brushed. "I finally have an in, and you're going on about fish. I need the _good_ stories."

"Can't you just ask him yourself?"

"But I need to know what to _say,_ and when to look amazed, and if there's a chance to sympathetically pat him on the back."

Sakura snorted; she couldn't help it. "I don't think so."

Ino gave her another sharp tug. "Well how will I know if you don't tell me?"

"Let me think, then." There was the fight on the bridge, of course. Sasuke had saved Naruto's life. That was heroic.

But she didn't really want to talk about the bridge. And she didn't want to talk about the Demon Brothers in the forest, and she didn't want to talk about digging the graves, even though Sasuke had helped her move the bodies without her needing to ask. Men were heavy when they were dead.

She shuddered, and Ino's hands stilled on her shoulders. "Sakura?"

"I'm still thinking."

Ino's hands tightened briefly, as if she were going to insist. But she didn't, and Sakura was grateful.

* * *

><p>The barbeque place was crowded. Chouji and Shikamaru had claimed a long table, and while Chouji looked typically oblivious, Shikamaru was visibly put out at the trouble of keeping it. "You finally showed up."<p>

Ino smacked him as she walked by and took a seat across the table from him. "Sasuke sits here," she said, jabbing a finger at the chair next to her. Sakura sat down on her other side.

Shikamaru leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling. "Nice to see you too."

There wasn't any time for uncomfortable silence, though, because Ino immediately began berating Chouji about littering at the training fields. Sakura picked up a chopstick and spun it around her fingers. They were heavy plastic, in a tall can in the center of the table. It had good weight and balance for an eating utensil.

Ino had refused to let her out of the house in pants. "Put the skirt on and don't argue with me." That wouldn't usually be enough to prevent Sakura from arguing with anyone, but she actually rather liked wearing the skirt, a deep red one made of soft fabric that hung halfway down her thighs and flared out when she spun. She left her leggings on underneath, belted her shirt at her waist, and considered herself rather elegant when she left the house with her long hair swinging free.

Now, though, with Shikamaru in his mesh and sweat-stained overshirt, Chouji raining chip particles over himself as he crunched through his pre-dinner snack, she felt overdressed. She inched her chair closer to the table and hoped no one would notice.

"Hey dudes." Team Eight had arrived.

"Hi Kiba," Chouji answered for the table. Kiba glanced around and made to sit next to Ino. She shook her head and glared. He sighed, glanced at the empty seat on Sakura's other side, and walked all the way around the table to claim the chair next to Chouji. Akamaru barked a happy greeting and scrambled down from Kiba's head to curl up on his lap. Shino sat down beside Sakura. They nodded a silent greeting. "Where's Hinata?" Ino demanded.

Kiba shrugged, splaying himself out over the seat. "Her dad grounded her. She's not supposed to see anyone outside of training until he says otherwise."

"What did she do?" Ino leaned forward, her gossip face on. Sakura was very familiar with that face. She snagged a second chopstick and twiddled them as an excuse not to look at Kiba.

"Gods only know," he said, enjoying the attention. "Maybe she let her sister help her up off the floor. The man's a total ass. You know what he said when we came to pick her up before our last mission?"

Honestly, Sakura didn't care what the Hyuuga patriarch had said to the Inuzuka scion. Unfortunately, Kiba didn't much care whether or not his audience was interested. "…And then he was all, _you would think a clan that pays such care to the breeding of their pets would be more careful of their own._ He called Akamaru a _pet_, right there in front of his face!"

Sakura had to look at him then, to see if it really could be true that Kiba's mortal offense had come from the word "pet" and not Hiaishi's pointed barb. Their eyes met briefly. She looked away first, fists clenching around her chopsticks.

Sasuke and Naruto showed up together, and late. They were smudged in dirt and glaring at each other. Ino jumped to her feet and yanked out the chair next to her. "Sasuke! Sit here!" He wiped lank hair out of his eyes, elbowing Naruto on the way, and gave Ino a smoldering glare. Sakura heard her give a heart struck sigh. He stalked around the table and sat down next to Shikamaru.

Naruto plopped down in the conveniently drawn out chair. "Hiya, Ino! Hi, Sakura-chan!"

Ino's eyes turned from hearts to narrow slits, and she hissed at Sakura. "This is your fault."

Sakura slouched lower in her chair. Maybe it was, but _she _would have preferred not to come at all.

"So Sasuke," Ino said, leaning forward across the table. "You just got back from an out of village mission, didn't you? Was it terribly exciting?"

Sasuke grunted, and folded his arms. But Naruto was more than happy to fill Ino in.

"-sword was like _this _big"

"Watch where you're waving your -"

"-it was all _shwing, bang, aaaaah -_"

"Keep it down, we're in public-"

"-villagers were so scared, but then I-"

Ino slowly slid further and further down in her chair, giving up on keeping control of the situation. Sasuke was determinedly eating his food, ignoring everyone at the table. Kiba had launched into his own, competing story, holding court over a blank-faced Shino and constantly-chewing Chouji at the other end of the table.

Sakura settled back, content to take what amusement she could from the vaguely poleaxed expression on Ino's face as Naruto continued to narrate the adventures of Team Seven, or Naruto and his Glorious Band. This wasn't exactly the bonding experience Ino had sold it as, but really, she should have expected this. It wasn't like any of the teams actually got along.

* * *

><p>"I can't believe that's finally over," Ino grouched, as they headed away from the restaurant. "What did I say about inviting Naruto? I told you it would end up like this. He's always so-"<p>

Sakura grabbed her arm and squeezed. "_Ino."_

"What?" She looked up, at Naruto standing on the corner of the street, carefully not looking at the two of them. Sasuke appeared in the doorway of the restaurant, and Naruto hurried over, ducking his head and dragging his teammate in the other direction.

"I didn't mean for him to hear that."

Sakura started walking, suddenly angry at Ino. She wasn't even trying to apologize. It was always like that with Ino. She thought she knew best; she thought she was supposed to be the center of everything. She never even considered that she was hurting other people.

"Sakura! Slow down. What is wrong with you?"

Sakura nearly hit her. The anger boiled up inside her like a whole separate person, pressing against her skin and demanding she lash out. Sakura grit her teeth and shoved it down. "I'm tired, Ino, and I'm going home." She cut a sharp left and ran up the side of the nearest building, grabbing the overhanging eaves and swinging herself up onto the roofs. Ino shouted after her, but she started running.

The roof route was new to her. It was just enough different than tree-running that she had to pay attention, and the anger slipped away as she focused on finding the subtle marks that laid out paths, the different sheen of the tiles where they had been treated with high-friction coatings to aid quick travel. It was a much faster way to traverse the village, avoiding crowds and tangled streets. Soon she was home.

Home was dark, and still, and empty. She turned on all the lights, and the radio, and tugged her big comforter to the floor of her bedroom. She had scarcely curled up underneath it when she got up again. She grabbed her kunai holster from the hook by the door, and picked her childhood stuffed bear up from her bed. Then she crawled back into the warm nest.

* * *

><p>Sakura woke up sometime in the night, heart pounding, hot and trapped. It was bright; all the lights in the house still on, and the calm voices of radio newsmen drifted up the stairs. But the house was still empty. When she pressed her face against the black window, she could see a scythe-shaped moon dropping low on the horizon.<p>

It wasn't far to Ino's place. She didn't even need the old route along the fence and up the drainpipe anymore. She walked up the flat of the wall and tapped at Ino's window. A few moments later it slid open silently, Ino's pale face surrounded by a satiny curtain of loose hair shining in the reflected light from streetlamps.

Sakura climbed over the windowsill and dropped her backpack in the corner. Ino was already pulling out the extra blankets from under her bed. She watched quietly as Sakura turned her back and stripped off her shirt, reaching in her bag for pajamas. "Did you want to talk?" Ino whispered.

Sakura shrugged, feeling the new scar pull across her shoulder blade. She didn't want to talk; she just didn't want to be alone.

Ino understood, and let her slide under the blankets before lying down next to her, back-to-back in the darkness.

* * *

><p>"Ino! Breakfast!" Sakura froze, halfway out the window. Ino lifted her head, groggily, and scrubbed hands across her eyes. "Sakura, you too!" Ino's father's voice reverberated through the house.<p>

"Who's cooking?" Ino bellowed back, sitting up to fully engage her diaphragm in the sound.

"Me!"

Ino grinned, and popped up to her feet. "Well, come on then, Sakura," she chirped.

Resigned, Sakura swung her leg back into the room. No matter how quiet she was, or how late she arrived, Ino's dad always knew when she'd come visiting. One of the perks of being a jounin, she supposed. It wasn't all bad, though; Inoichi was a good cook.

Downstairs, Ino's mom had the newspaper spread across the table, a book on her lap, and a pen clenched between her teeth. Inoichi spun in from the kitchen, steaming bowls of sweet porridge in each hand and a rose tucked behind his ear. He added the bowls to the table and laid the rose delicately between the pages of his wife's book. "We have a guest this morning, dear."

Closing her book, Akiko tilted her head up to kiss him, as Ino and Sakura sat down at the table. "Thank you for having me over for breakfast," Sakura said politely.

Ino snorted, and Inoichi waved a dismissive hand. "Always a pleasure, Sakura."

Sakura hid a grin in her hand. She'd been coming here for years, sneaking into Ino's room to find her friend. She came on the lonely nights, when her aunt and uncle were gone, and on the frightening nights, when Shizuka stood in the kitchen, clenching the edge of the table in white-knuckled fists and staring at something no one else could see. And no matter how Ino and Sakura had fought in the daytime, what horrible insults had flown at school, none of it mattered in the dark.

Inoichi made a few more trips into the kitchen, returning with an stylishly arranged platter of fruit and a vase of fresh flowers. Akiko tucked her red rose into the center of the arrangement, where it splashed color over white lace blooms and little yellow buds that Sakura didn't recognize.

The meal had a simple elegance that Sakura secretly enjoyed. In the Yamada household, Iwao would be flipping pancakes from a sizzling pan into waiting hands with the hilt of a kunai. Shizuka would be halfway through her fourth cup of coffee, bleary-eyed and hunching protectively over the honey. Plates ended up clean at the end because the food never had time to reach them. The radio on, Iwao humming, Shizuka rattling her fingers against the table as the caffeine kicked in.

The Yamanakas ate from delicate porcelain bowls, fresh flowers always on the table. Today, Inoichi and Akiko talked about the latest developments in Council politics, quoting numbers and facts from years gone to support their opinions.

It all felt so normal. She could have been back in the Academy, hanging out with Ino on their day off from lessons. Except they weren't in Academy, and nothing was so simple anymore.

At 6:30, Akiko went to open the flower shop. Inoichi tied on his hitae-ate and headed off towards the center of the village. Ino walked with Sakura to the edge of the training grounds, before giving her a hug. "I'm always here for you, sweetheart." Then she skipped away towards her own meeting with Shikamaru and Chouji.

Sakura made her way towards her team's field with less enthusiasm. She didn't really want to see Naruto or Sasuke this morning. By the end of the mission, there had almost been a sort of camaraderie between them, or at least a pattern they could follow. After last night, she wasn't sure if it would still be there.

The boys were already at the field, arguing. "Hey Sasuke. Hi, Naruto." Sasuke grunted in her direction. Naruto shot her a quick glance, then looked away, shoulders hunching in.

Sakura's breath hitched. She walked past them, heading towards the treeline. She ran through half-hearted katas, as far from the other two as she could get, while they waited for Kakashi to show up. And waited.

At noon, Sakura fished a rice ball from her backpack and climbed up a tree to eat it in the shade. "Kakashi-sensei!"

He looked up from his book, single eye crinkling in a happy welcome. "Sakura! What a pleasant surprise!" He lounged on a branch a few meters above her intended lunch perch, looking for all the world like he never would have expeccted to see her there.

"We've been waiting for you," she accused, covering her own startlement with recriminations. "For five hours."

"You seemed to be getting along just fine," Kakashi said, gesturing down to where Naruto and Sasuke were battering each other with furious taijutsu.

Sakura was at a loss for words. Just fine? The three had barely spoken to each other this morning. Sasuke and Naruto weren't _training_, they were halfway to trying to kill each other. And Sakura -

She had been wasting time, letting her mind wander and doing such sloppy katas she may as well not have been practicing at all. Her face flushed red. "Aren't you supposed to be teaching us?" she snapped.

Kakashi tapped his book against his chin thoughtfully. "Is that so?"

"Yes."

Kakashi stretched, then slid off his branch. He dropped fifteen meters straight down and landed softly. "Well come on then."

Sakura walked down, thinking nasty thoughts about lazy show-offs.

Kakashi sauntered out onto the training field. Sasuke and Naruto grappled on the ground, fighting for joint locks and pulling each other's hair. Kakashi picked Naruto up by the scruff of his jacket, and Sasuke had to let go or get dragged along with. "Break it up boys. There's some important team business to attend to."

"You showed up!" Naruto shouted, still dangling in the air. Kakashi dropped him. "You're like days late! We thought you'd never show! What gives?"

"I was investigating an infestation of pomeranians in the senior center. It looks like you three were making equally good use of your time," Kakashi said drily. "In any case, you all need post-mission checkups, so why don't you scamper on over to the hospital and get that taken care of, hmm?"

Sakura nodded when he glanced at her. She'd already been planning to go after practice; it was proper procedure, after all.

"I don't need one," Sasuke said flatly. "I am healthy."

"You," Kakashi said, pointing his book at Sasuke's nose, "were injured on a mission. The medics need to verify your condition. _And_ you are going to get Shigeta-sensei to look at those." He gestured the book at Sasuke's eyes. "I will know if you don't." His tone made it clear that Sasuke would regret it if Kakashi heard that news.

Sasuke folded his arms and glowered. Kakashi gave him a eye-curving smile. "Wonderful. Get going. Best not to procrastinate. No time like the present. You too, Naruto."

"I already went," Naruto muttered. He scuffed the ground with his sandal. "The Old Man made me go last night. Stupid doctors."

"Perfect. Then you can stay and train with me while Sasuke and Sakura get their checkups."


End file.
